 Downtown Nights, by Joy Baer (USA) contemporary. Click on image for artist site. Dear Ekphrastic Writers, You are my people. I so admire your limitless creativity and surprise. That’s why reading so many submissions, several times over, was more pleasure than work. Thank you all! Congratulations to my Top Twelve! My apologies to those I did not accept. I’m a less is more type, and I’m sorry that meant turning away most of you, even those I’ve accepted or nominated for prizes in the past. You’re about to see how wonderfully varied the viewpoints are – not just night and day different, but spring and winter, somber and playful, flash fiction and poetry, beautiful and witty, downtown and out in nature, even skipping off to another universe. A big THANK YOU TO ARTIST JOY BAER for inspiring your talent! Please visit Joy’s website to learn more about her and her artwork. And thanks always to Lorette C. Luzajic for bringing our ekphrastic community together. Happy reading! Alarie Tennille ** Deck the Halls with Love and Folly It was his arm around her waist I saw first, her bright yellow raincoat caught in the headlights of impatient queuing traffic: people rushing home on Christmas Eve. I was watching from my window. The rain had just begun to fall. I felt glad to be tucked inside four walls glowing orange, fire crackling spitting, and sprinkling embers on the hearth. I didn’t know which one I should be thinking of. The one who’d shared so many of my days, who called me to say nothing much at all except he missed me, but take all the time you need or the one I wanted wrapped in tinsel and delivered to my door, who made blood rush to my head and turned my belly into a pit of snakes. The windowpane was now a muted kaleidoscope of colours. Sinatra crooned, the wine was mulled and I sipped it thinking I had not been good. No need to put the milk and cookies out. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman is a Poet living and writing in the coastal village of Lake Tabourie, New South Wales, Australia. She has been writing poetry since April 2021. Her formal qualifications are in Business Management and Personal Training so she immerses herself in reading classic and modern poets and studying the art of writing poetry. Linda has recently been published in three anthologies, and also by viewlesswings.com and in The Ekphrastic Review. ** Hidden Treasure a tall magnolia spreads its large leathery stiff deep green leaves each bigger than my palm, rich, cool under my fingers it casts long shadows on a bright blue-sky cloudless afternoon creating chiaroscuro in this courtyard garden corner I want to lean in to the tree's embrace its rigid branches strong, supple, dark, enveloping, find respite from too much brightness, heat I inhale it, its woody scent over another softer citronella note then a surprise flash of startling white – a single perfect bloom the silky floral globe as big as two fists wafting its perfume unexpected, alone months after spring and blossom time this perfect pale orb's hidden treasure Emily Tee Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers. In retirement she's started writing poetry and flash fiction. She has had pieces published for The Ekphrastic Review challenges and in print with Dreich magazine, with others forthcoming with Dreich and elsewhere. She lives in England. ** New York Nights in Another Universe As time passes, I see you more & more as glimmer, window glare on a passing train—whoever joins me in its wake will see only the dull olive hues of the subway tunnel, but my retinas still remember the vibrant flash, the full spectrum of your heart’s technicolor beats. Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum is a writer and teacher born and raised in Alaska. She has published eight books of poetry and fiction through her company, Red Sweater Press, in addition to dozens of individual pieces in numerous literary magazines. She currently serves as President of Alaska Writers Guild and Editor in Chief of The Poets' Touchstone, a publication by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. ** City Lights I’d walked down the street many times in both day time and night time and not noticed them. I’d driven down there many times in both day time and night time and not noticed them. But something seen so often may become unseen without a new perspective, a new dimension. And tonight I climbed higher to see the street from above. A mosaic lay below me, a city of squares. Squares, where there were no squares before. Squares of light projected like an art installation, broken and fragmented making the ordinary into extraordinary. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com/ ** Geometry of Urban Landscape A liquorice river parts the neon heat. There’s a hum where songbirds cannot be. Look, a pick and mix flecked sweet shop of night energy, squares, towers, blots in Morse code, places to lose your soul, hang out with strangers you’ll never meet again. You dance in clubs, on pavements, below those sky-scraping giants, escape the bills and who you really are, pretending it’s a masked ball. Maggie Mackay Maggie Mackay’s pamphlet, The Heart of the Run, Picaroon Poetry, 2018 was followed by her full collection A West Coast Psalter, Kelsay Books, 2021. In 2020 she was awarded a place in the Poetry Archive’s WordView permanent collection. She reviews poetry pamphlets at https://sphinxreview.co.uk (Happenstance Press)and collections at The Friday Poem (https://thefridaypoem.com).She can be found on Twitter @Bonniedreamer. ** falling like rain In my dreams I lack a destination, but I continue to travel through the landscapes, visiting mysterious buildings with hallways that form mazes, that leave me unable to find the right room – late for a meeting, a test, a rendezvous with no time or place attached –living in houses that seem familiar yet not quite right, filled with people whose names I don’t know. It’s always dark with artificial light, often below ground. Staircases are a common feature. Cats and dogs wander in and out of narrow shadowed empty streets, and I always miss my train. What day is it? I have no idea. What did I do yesterday? I can’t remember. But I’m pretty sure I’m awake now — aren’t I? Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig resides in NYC where she plays with words and images. You can follow her work on the blog she does with her friend Nina, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/, or at https://kblog.blog/. ** Not Wait in Vain She looked up at the mottled skin of the housing complex that seemed to quiver with the flickering of the lights, flexing reptilian muscles. Each square of brilliance, red, blue, green, white was a window. She wouldn’t have used the word ‘home’ even if it had been a familiar one. Cells. Bees. Except that bees had been useful. They didn’t talk about bees any more. A transport train zipped along a rail fifty yards up, flying through darkness. Closer, at ground level, the beams of a patrol vehicle sliced the darkness as it passed with the whirr of a metallic, predatory insect. She moved on, the sound of her footsteps too loud. Not that the night was silent. Some of the windows were open, parties, frantic, music loud. Police drones droned. Someone threw something out of a window, too many levels up to count. She heard a scream and corrected herself. Someone threw someone out of a window, too many levels up to count. The night was not silent, but her footsteps rang out high and clear, arresting. The sound was a quiet intrusion, like the persistent cough in the middle of a symphony concert, like the flick of a knife blade in the clamour of a fight. No one ever walked the city night. She hunched her shoulders against the lights of the mottled dragon, let her gaze drift along the restless concrete river of a highway, an artery irrigating half-life. The highway rolled between hundreds, thousands of complexes, their skin flickering with luminous warts. She had no idea how far the never-sleeping dragon coiled. Hundreds of miles perhaps. It didn’t matter, as long as its coils ended somewhere. It didn’t matter because it was time to accept that no one else would be walking the city night. He would never come down from his blue or red or green room, not now. Not even for her. A hundred feet up, a light flicked from green to red before it went out. The traffic whined and whispered, not now, not ever. Laughter rattled inside her head. She swallowed back all the longing, the tears, the anger and despair and began to walk. Jane Dougherty Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, The Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com. Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020. ** In a Galaxy Not Far Away Gone our walks past the art school. Gone its glass-block wall. Gone my walking partner, our flickering shadows. Rush-hour reflections no longer waver in the glass like supernovas—white headlights, red taillights. Gone the blue-green night of downtown’s encroaching darkness. Demolition, another kind of death. But isn’t that the way of the universe? I enter an earthly space of timeless symbols as cinematic as photos sent back from outer, or is that inner, space where the gas and dust of a nebula can be either the explosion of a dying star or where new stars begin. Each glass square witnesses a story. The first time we touched hands, a shooting star. The first time we kissed, a pulsar in the sultry heat of a Southern summer. Now my walking partner no longer orbits my life. I imagine he has entered another dimension, translucent as these glass blocks, in another galaxy not far away. Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg loves the marriage of poetry and art and is a frequent contributor to The Ekphrastic Review’s biweekly challenges. Her poetry has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. She lives in Houston, the city of NASA and space exploration, where so often architectural marvels are demolished to make way for the new. The loss of the old Glassell Art School’s building, a tour-de-force of reflective glass blocks built in 1978, caused considerable upset. It was seen as a sacrifice of the city’s architectural heritage. ** Tomfoolery? Fractured flimsy images of a time gone by Music, dance and other tomfoolery Holding court for all to see. Brazen and baffling Conniving and cajoling Life from a carcass. Let it be for all to see That things are not always What they appear to be. Ellie Klaus Ellie Klaus was born and raised in Montreal. She has lived different selves over several decades: daughter, wildlife biology graduate, vision quest traveler, family life educator, president (of her son's school committee), friend, confidante, lover, wife, mother, caregiver and now caregivee, if there is such a word. Each has contributed to a different perspective of living, of life. The pieces of the puzzle are evident and coming together, although the final image is yet to be revealed. So, writing has reemerged as a creative endeavor to release some of the angst that arises from living a confined life, or any life for that matter. She has a poem entitled 'Bones' that appears in NationalPoetryMonth.ca April 9, 2020 and poems published in The Ekphrastic Review and Pocket Lint. ** Glass Lilies this is the city rippling with life a million pixelations rainbow shards cast like glass lilies skating wet pavements this is the city lights flickering bouncing off steel automated fireflies abseiling glaze eerily beautiful this is the city the anonymity of it drawing me in the tramp and shuffle of footed expectation silvered in mercury this is the city Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and has been passionate about poetry since childhood. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Poetry Village, Words for the Wild, Poetry on the Lake, Alchemy Spoon, Dreich, The Poet and Fly on the Wall. She has had poems in two Scottish Writers Centre chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** My Wings Are Not Waterproof A murderous mid-afternoon in June, as I sink below the surface of the pond, thirty thousand waterlilies reflect and refract in my compound eyes. Falling through fathoms of cold khaki, down in the dark deep algae, lemon and lime light splinters on sticklebacks, flicking fish scales flash onto my failing lenses the supernova of my universe. Saskia Ashby Saskia Ashby is an artist, poet, academic and theatre practitioner from the UK. ** Carefree It’s that bare toes in the grass Feeling Dew jumping against ankles Green blades parting and undulating In partnership of streetlight and moon. It’s that giggle for no reason Feeling Just an instinct Crowned with joy An internal invisible shimmer. It’s that single wild strawberry Feeling Unexpected gift from the roadside Solitary succulent delight Testimony to all things sweetly innocent. Melinda Dewsbury Melinda experiences poetry as therapy, a kind of grounding exercise that connects physical embodiment with big ideas and deep truths. During the pandemic, she and her mother wrote Pandemic Poems back and forth to one another. In 2021, their experience was featured in an interview and poetry reading on CBC radio’s On the Coast. Melinda lives in Langley, British Columbia.
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 The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (Spain) 1931 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali. Deadline is August 5, 2022 . You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. Whether or not a writer offers a voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include DALI CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, August 5, 2022. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you! 14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally! 15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 17. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  The Skt. Wandanna Cathedral in Band Hain, by Adolf Wolfli (Switzerland) 1910 EMBROIDERED REPRESENTION OF THE BRAIN OF SHOSTAKOVICH DURING ONE PARTICULAR TIME close your eyes and count to...before the ceramic raven can fly under or around is more like it open your eyes skulls will emerge uninterested faces around the spires the raven with fly stiff-winged and faceless around the spires while bland skulls just stare or turn upside down the one with the universe’s smallest bodice can’t find its neck it stopped looking and what’s the point of a robot here or a two-headed fish trapped let them/it out let out out microfilm nearly lost famous close your eyes step back 15 feet open your eyes and I would wager that the tribunes attempting no pretending meaninglessness will be the first things you see 5 skulls 3 atop tweaked out hay-bails perhaps behind these utterly approachable excuses for bouncers you might just neglect temptation that is a temptation to retreat you might lurch cork-like toward the arched center door find it is a scrim find yourself on the other side buttered stairs the real danger but no language not here anyway no language not a single one can instruct you on the proper negotiation of a greased stairwell robots with flesh biceps are keeping watch next to the diamonds drafted after being bamboozled into hearing and hearing “music about terror” but high above the clown gorilla inspired portrait with the pointed cap spins twizzles as freely in the vacant space that emerged from nothing any nothing they’re everywhere but that does not mean their theme is invasion that flared up immediately after and when the last number not the actual last number that would be ridiculous and take all afternoon the last number you stopped before repeating close your eyes step back 15 feet open your eyes and tell me without speaking or tightening your needy shawl what you between remembering what you saw last time has quadrupled impossible not to see impossible to speak so what’s point especially after realizing with a shock that it’s all embroidery anyway just plain old embroidery trying at times to have you believe that they papered one sewn wall with sheet music but without enough notes to honor 600,000 dead Shostakovich wallpaper squeezing a fish into a highly decorated pot which is not a honied victory anyway done with that 1941 movement #1 thirty minutes long give or don’t eight horns six trombones two harps a piano three side drums and percussion instruments in every outskirt of the stage smugglers out of Russia Leningrad at last loudspeakers implanted in the ears of each enemy vapid meat until they could barely stand it Toscanini Toscanini Toscanini town’s people shouted waving flags of dittoed wallpaper Leningrad around the world until today and always Leningrad Cemetery half a million victims 900-day Siege of Leningrad try with futility to rest seven John L. Stanizzi John L. Stanizzi authored eleven collections - Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide/Ebb Tide, Chants, Four Bits, Sundowning, POND, and The Tree That Lights the Way Home. John's latest book, Feathers and Bones, with be out shortly. Published by Steve Cawte and his beautiful press in London, impspired, Feathers and Bones is a hybrid "call and response" book comprising "garlands"and "ghazals"in concert. Besides, of course, The Ekphrastic Review, he has also published in Prairie Schooner, American Life In Poetry, New York Quarterly, Tar River, Paterson Literary Review and many others. His translations appear widely in Italy. His nonfiction has appeared in Stone Coast Review, Ovunque Siamo, after the pause, many others. A former New England Poet of the Year, John received a Fellowship in 2021 from Connecticut Office of the Arts and Cultural Diversity. He lives in Coventry, CT., with his wife, Carol. https://johnlstanizzi.com ** Duplex for Adolf Wölfli Drawing Colouring with pencils, he constructs his world: seraphs, mothers and saints commune and sing whilst devils, monsters and skulls gurn and hiss lines of blue notes. He draws blank eyes, scrawls lines of spidery notes. Eyes blank, he draws more: peace doves coo at flocks of howling spectres, love birds coo at howling flocks of orphans. This holy place hushes his mind with pattern. This holy place hushes and patterns his mind. In his temple of crosses, no one can harm him. In his temple of crosses, he can harm no one. Are the innocents safe now he mark-makes? Will he be saved now he has made his marks? Colouring with pencils, he dreams his heaven. Dorothy Burrows Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poems, flash fiction and short plays. Her poetry has appeared in various journals including The Ekphrastic Review. She sometimes doodles flowers and faces. ** Wandanna Challenge red and green towers words printed right round marking the hours hear cathedral sounds Carole Mertz Carole Mertz writes from Parma, OH. She has work forthcoming at Adanna Literary Journal. Sounds matter, but silence sometimes grips. ** Synthesis The blind composer Wilhelm Bischoff sat at the wooden console, his fingers feeling out the notches where he would place the note markers. Soon Anna Legrand, his lover, would arrive. Like him she was no longer in the first flush of youth and it took her more time these days to walk the steep streets of Band Hain from her home to his rented rooms above the apothecary's. Anna was assisting Wilhelm by transcribing his work from his composing desk onto a musical score. She was the only one he trusted with the task. Waiting for her he kept working, his hands darting back and forth. As the melody played itself over and over in his mind his fingers would delve into the relevant compartment, picking up minims, crochets, sharp signs, flats – whatever the muse determined - to be placed on the correct part of the stave. This piece was to be an oratorio, commissioned by the choirmaster at the nearby cathedral. Sometimes Anna had to wait for Wilhelm to reach a break point before she could carry out her transcription. She could read back the music and hum it in a mellow mezzo soprano so Wilhelm could get a sense of how it was translating to the page. They'd been working together harmoniously for three years. Wilhelm recognised Anna's soft tread entering the room. “Hello Anna, my darling, I'm nearly ready for you. There's some hot chocolate if you'd like it. I've had a very productive morning.” Anna dropped a light kiss on the top of his bald head, careful not to knock the smoked glasses he always wore. She sat in a nearby armchair and unpacked a small roll of canvas from her shoulder-bag. As usual, she'd use the waiting time for her own project. An accomplished seamstress, she was pleased with how the embroidery was developing, almost organically. For the last three months she'd not only captured the layout of the cathedral and environs but started incorporating the theme from Wilhelm's composition. Notes and choral verses appeared in delicate traceries, alongside figures looking a lot like their composer. They appeared all over – everywhere Wilhelm's music breathed she captured a figure of him. Today, however, she saw her work in a new light. As it neared completion she could see it was no longer the cathedral picture she'd originally imagined. It had taken on its own personality. Now, stretching the fabric out flat to see the totality, rather than just the small segment she'd been focusing on, she was startled to realise that something else was emerging. Was it just her imagination, or was there the outline of a face? The figure top left was one eye, the vertical teardrop shape, the other. An unmistakable nose with two strong nostrils, above an open smiling mouth. It had somehow become the offspring of the two of them. Emily Tee Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers. Now retired she has started writing poetry and flash fiction. She has had pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges and in print with Dreich magazine, with others forthcoming with Dreich and elsewhere. She lives in England. ** F-L-O-R-I-D-I-T-Y Fanciful and fastidious footwork Loquacious if you listen and learn Ornate and omnipotent over-the-top Relics remembered reconstructed Indigenous icons insidiously implanted Decorative dancing-dervish doorways Impeccable interlaced intricacies Tumultuous theological trends Yearning for year-round yoga R. T. Sedgwick R. T. Sedgwick is an award-winning poet in Del Mar, CA and the author of three full-length poetry books, all published by A Word with You Press. His poetry is published in numerous anthologies and he is a charter member in the Escondido Arts Partnerships yearly ekphrastic publication titled Summations which is a continuing publication for more than 15 years. ** The Keeper Eyes look through grandeur Prolonging illusion of truth To the discovering self- Enter lives restoring them. You cannot go You cannot go anywhere- The echoes rise from the flames of desire Above archives of church hymns, mosque cries And temple bells. The night thickens, motionless- Guilty of fading details and leaving the regrets. In doubt or in faith, how do I pray then, Into the ruin I see no longer or can tell- How far it all was, how far. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing the most. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Skt. Wandanna Cathedral Music presses against my ears Then shoots out of my eyes In crazed mandalas Because it’s sent by little witches And false prophets to confound me. They all sneak around my head And look, someone planted a skull there Just to keep its skeletal eyes on me, Because they envy me- They patrol and incarcerate me. See, they’ve stripped my flesh! The soft pillow over my heart Which a mother, long ago, Stroked and loved. Loved? Loved me? Now I stare out from this haunted cathedral, My head with its several skulls, My eyes shooting out of windows My arms pointy turrets And where my heart used to be- Where my mother used to croon- Devils stomp and rattle. Mass is at 10 every morning. If you come, you will be eaten. Notice the lady in a red dress and black boots? See how she has been turned into the priest In the bottom right corbel? Come, if you can. Come if you dare. Lucie Lucie is a retired librarian who is trying to write as much as possible and loves an ekphrastic challenge. ** Wolfli Cathedral Like the mad prince complaining of bad dreams I found myself bound stopped, held frozen in this close asylum tight and small as a nutshell impossible to crack facing the chain of days of years lined up like time in Limbo without hope of eventual redemption My sentence of confinement the pressure of time and gravity that forces coal to diamond hammers me out like steel on an anvil making me a blade keen enough to pierce the walls of my prison and pull a new world through the keyhole I chisel with my pencil on sheet after sheet\ of cheap newsprint I raise cathedrals full of music draw the rhythm of arches and aspiring towers, of walls and windows lined with poetry and prophecy moving like streams of song around each step and cornice naming me my new world’s one consecrated Saint, Author and King of divine invention free in the splendor of my sublime designs Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Earth’s Daughters and Third Wednesday. She has been a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. ** Writer’s Block 1. The other day I wrote down on paper with a pen “I have started thinking at least.” That was after a day or two when my Thalamus had finally allowed the flow of colors into the deserted colourless patterns of my cerebral cortex. 2. “And I find it really sad that you've given up on composing poetry.” he said. “I can’t write anymore, not even prose,” I said for the millionth time, I think… “Something’s broken.” I finally said (out loud). “Hmm… I will not probe further.” 3. Was it a coincidence that I stumbled upon Writer’s Block a couple of days later? …If you are a victim of apathy, confess! If it’s a break you need from yourself, don’t fabricate excuses or fashion fancy terminologies to conceal your deficiencies… … If you are a Kafir and have no faith in prayers, leave the others out of your private matters. And do not go about insulting The House of Creation, The Thalamus, by uttering such blasphemy as “writer’s block!” … * Once again, I started questioning myself; one of the whys that I had been asking myself for a good part of the last three years. Until I gripped my slipping mind: “You needed to learn that not everything that someone says is true for you, even if most of what they say is… That was why.” “You needed the eye to see all those lessons that this book is pregnant with.” I said to myself as I made a note of adding Biblio Alpha of Prose Poems** to the list of the books that I had planned on dedicating some time to. “What you seek comes to you, but you cannot beat time.” One final thought, before I stuffed the book in my bag and left for work… It was time. 4. Was it a coincidence that I found Do not Love Half Lovers only hours later? …Do not accept half a solution Do not believe half-truths Do not dream half a dream Do not fantasize about half hopes Half a drink will not quench your thirst Half a meal will not satiate your hunger Half the way will get you no where Half an idea will bear you no results Your other half is not the one you love It is you in another time yet in the same space It is you when you are not…*** “Dear Kahlil, Thanks for your help. I hope you won’t mind that I do not agree with you entirely. Because, Solutions are to be found, not accepted/rejected. One should not disgrace the truth by not believing the half of it that finds one. Dreams are not to be dreamt. They are to be crafted instead. Sometimes from nothing, into something. Half a drink will quench some of your thirst. Half a meal will satiate some of your hunger. Half the way will get you somewhere.” 5. “I needed to find my own colors to fill in the patterns in my brain, that I never got to fill myself. Maybe it is time to fill those patterns with colors that I find.” I realize as I feel a feeble connection with my other half in that brief moment. Maraam A. Pasha *This is an excerpt from the poem 'Writer’s Block' by Saad Ali **This is a publication by Saad Ali *** This is an excerpt from the poem 'Do Not Love Half Lovers' by Kahlil Gibran Maraam Pasha (b. 1999 C.E. in Lahore, Pakistan) has been raised in Rawalpindi & Islamabad, Pakistan. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Accounting & Finance from the National University of Pakistan, Pakistan. She has worked as a Marketing & Communications Manager, at EDSA, UK & Mob Inspire, USA. She currently works as a Business Development Manager at a multinational company: DeafTawk. Maraam has been published in The Ekphrastic Review. She finds literature a way to connect with both herself, and others. Her other interests include: photography, painting, music, travelling, baking, and sculpting. She shares her artistic creations on her page: www.instagram.com/maraam_pasha. ** Portrait of an Artist: Adolf Wolfli In the dark halls of a hospital I discovered an outsider and followed him home. The artist lived alone in a sparsely furnished room with court-mandated locks. He poured colour and insanity onto sheets of newsprint; the sounds of his world touched the edges of life and the paper. A thirty year commitment fed fantasies and isolation fueled frenzied collages of anger, music and birds. In triumph, St Adolf lifted a paper trumpet to his mouth and played his painting. Lesley Rogers Hobbs Lesley Rogers Hobbs is an Irish writer and poet. She loves popcorn, sunshine, Pink Floyd and the ocean. She currently lives in a van with her husband and dog and travels the US visiting their four kidlets and national parks. ** No Answers, Only Incomprehension The spiders are at peace In the derelict, desolate cathedral of stone Unloosing their filigreed artistry, filament upon filament To feed on the embodied, talk to the disembodied In the forsaken church, French-windowed, deep-pillared Twisted with age, clenched with creepers, their blood-red buds And hidden among quite miles of forests and mountains Cold squares of glass freeze the sun and sky, veil its secrets within The hollow gazes of skulls, clavicles, tibias, femurs Mandibles, ribs, phalanges of hand and foot Among happy lights of chalices, crucifixes, capes and candles Sanctus bells, censurs and boats and thuribles The decay past the sanctuary, nave, sacristy, altar, ambo The presider’s chair, credence table, tabernacle and the ambry Beneath wall panels of saints, mystics and priests Rich with pieces of faith, headgear, necklaces, gold rings Crows caw in skies of fluid blue Agitate amongst knife-edged gusts of wind When will humankind stop torturing faith? With its loathing, killing acts of passion? When will it learn to free its soul? To a borderless oneness? The steeple stands pointedly still It has no answers, only incomprehension Chitra Gopalakrishnan Chitra Gopalakrishnan, a New Delhi-based journalist and a social development communications consultant, uses her ardour for writing, wing to wing, to break firewalls between fiction and poetry, narratology and psychoanalysis, marginalia and manuscript and treeism and capitalism. www.chitragopalakrishnan.com ** Composition I am the stave where the faithful pray in this universal time-scape the organ scatters its quavers that settle on tapestry drapes stitched and rivered in veins shards of glass shapes cascade the masonry a waterfall of tessellation tumbling stoned architrave rolling along the nave like snippets of cellophane kneel at my balustrade read the lyric in my tracery feel the comfort in each pane I will translate the meaning of colour-stain a bouquet of celebration Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and has been passionate about poetry since childhood. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Poetry Village, Words for the Wild, Poetry on the Lake, Alchemy Spoon, Dreich, The Poet and Fly on the Wall. She has had poems in two Scottish Writers Centre chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** The City You Built Without Me Is Beautiful And I Hate It The eyes have it, since way back. Yours are the color of the sea. The walls of joist and socket let me climb to the exact height of witness, but still the doors are locked to me. Music is a way of seeing for all creatures. There is a giant among us, between us and sometimes he is lullabied to sleep and we are left with the old ways to cherish and hold on to because happiness is fleeting even as the cup is overflowing. You marked me with your cobbled vision and after that day I was never the same. I no longer needed a god. That is to say, I’ve been trying to write this message for a long time and everything gets in the way. I no longer seek knowledge but a small opening. How do you start telling someone you love them after a long drought of expression? You have been walking it back for years now, back peddling like a fiend, your perfect nose always to the grindstone, anything to show proof that you reside somewhere outside my reach. This tooth is your tooth. I made it, it was made for me and we both have to chew with it. Decay is a devil and hard to spot amongst the Italianate tiles and everything turned on its side, the way memories come back to me of my mother’s favorite chairs painstakingly carved and then ravaged by beetles. Sass-back was never your style. Yes, Ma’am was more like it and then I love you quietly fading into a draught-induced sleep. It was the yelling that tore asunder everything we’d built. And once a stone has crumbled you need a prayer to bring it back and I was never willing. A spell was what I needed. Let’s sit and talk a spell like we used to after I’d turned off the ignition and the words wove around and through open windows, reaching into Nature as we knew it, grass and leaves always leading us to some body of water. That was where we shined. And it was brightly. A star will rip itself open to let out light when the burden becomes too heavy. Isn’t that the way of it? Let me believe a little while longer. Sometimes I can see there is heather to collect out past the city walls. The swans will lead us there after they’ve finished off the rest of their flock. Crystal Karlberg Crystal Karlberg (she/her) is a Library Assistant at her local public library. She is also a speaker for Greater Boston PFLAG. Her work has appeared in oddball magazine; Nixes Mate; Rust + Moth; The Ekphrastic Review. ** Wölfli’s Cloister Cathedral streets worn smooth by pauper footsteps shuffled at a snail’s pace to celebrate holy days, observe royalty christenings, champion Templar Knights (known only through legend) & 20th century cinema when biblical epics reigned world box offices supreme. Angel wings juxtaposed with grinning skills laud kenophobic Wölfli’s horror vacui obsession: interlinking lines filled white space with script, stone towers with excess windows, moorish arch doorways with exotic carvings & three-dimensional pinnacles with lines melted into heaven accompanied by music notes. Walking over his cobblestones in dreams, I clutch boots in hand marvel at relief sculptures & listen to brass clangors strike ornate church bells as they swing out of sight—yet in close proximity—to priests, nuns & cardinals who nurture deaf tollers as they pull & peel away a lifetime amid a medieval ossuary. Adolf Wölfli disturbs silent shadows within, producing songs from experience, embracing brut style, pushing imagination, sketching a Skt. Wandanna Cathedral in Band Hain doppelgänger to hang on the breeze between church pew aisles, disturbing hair shirt parishioners, successfully sharing violation’s scars. Sterling Warner An award-winning author, poet, and Evergreen Valley College English Professor, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared many literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Danse Macabre, Ekphrastic Review, Trouvaille Review, Shot Glass Journal, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, and Flytraps (2022)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Currently, Warner writes, hosts/participates in “virtual” poetry readings, and enjoys retirement in Washington. ** A House, Restored I am a dwelling of many rooms, a dollhouse cut in half, full of skulls. I am a house, prepared for a child; you see me in every square foot, gripping the ledge, my past a tome written on a stone foundation, sinking in depths, algae-grown, quiet and heavy. I set my guilt outside, lay grace like a doormat; you see, this place is not shame, but color and sighs, bones forgiven, built upon. I am a house, repaired by love; my son a master key, cut in faith. My temple of skeletons now rests. Heather Brown Barrett Heather Brown Barrett is a poet and member of Hampton Roads Writers. She lives in Virginia, mothering her young son and contemplating the meaning of life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband, Bradley Barrett. Her poetry has been published by The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), Defenestration, Superpresent Magazine, Backwards Trajectory, and by SEZ Publishing. She has work forthcoming in Black Bough Poetry. Find her on Instagram @heatherbrownbarrett **  Barbara Ponomareff Barbara Ponomareff lives in southern Ontario, Canada. By profession a child psychotherapist, she has been fortunate to be able to pursue her lifelong interest in literature, art and psychology since her retirement. The first of her two novellas, dealt with a possible life of the painter J.S.Chardin. Her short stories, memoirs and poetry have appeared in Descant, (EX)cite, Precipice and various other literary magazines and anthologies. She regularly contributes to The Ekphrastic Review and was delighted to win one of the recent flash story contests.  Downtown Nights, by Joy Baer (USA) contemporary. Click image for artist site. , Editor's Note: We are absolutely delighted and honoured to have the wonderful Alarie Tennille as a guest judge this time. She chose the artwork and she will choose the poems and stories that go up one week following the deadline. Alarie has been incredibly important to The Ekphrastic Review and we want to take this opportunity to thank her for invaluable support, service, insight, and guidance. From the very beginning she has been involved wherever possible, as a writer, a constant and careful reader, a guest editor, a Throwback Thursday curator, and as a prize nomination consultant. She has helped grow this journal and community, and ekphrasis as well. Her most recent book is a collection of ekphrastic poems, Three A.M. at the Museum, and I was honoured to write the preface for her. The book was named Director’s Pick at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Get your copy here. Thank you, Alarie!!! Lorette ** A Message from Guest Judge, Alarie Tennille Hello to all my fellow writers and lovers of ekphrasis. I feel like many of you have become friends from years of meeting at The Ekphrastic Review. I hope the fresco casein that I’ve selected will inspire you. I don’t know how Lorette manages to curate 25 challenges each year, but I'm delighted to join in as an occasional guest judge. I began my preparation the way I usually do, by scouting for art on the internet. I know from experience that it can be tricky to get permission to use art that isn’t in the Public Domain. I was scanning ancient Chinese scrolls and Impressionist paintings, then remembered that I know many local Kansas City area artists and have access to them through Facebook. The wonderful light in Impressionist paintings reminds me of the frescoes casein created by Joy Baer. Downtown Night especially called to me, though whether your writing has anything to say about night or downtown is up to you. Every Ekphrastic Challenge astonishes me with how limitless creativity can be. Many thanks to Joy Baer for permitting this use of her art. I know she looks forward to hearing how you see this work. I talked you up as appreciative, intuitive art lovers. Please visit her website to see more of her work. Alarie ** Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Downtown Night, by Joy Baer, Deadline is July 22, 2022 . You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. Scroll down for all the nitty gritty. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. Whether or not a writer offers a voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include BAER CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, July 22, 2022. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you! 14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally! 15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 17. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  Sign up today for our Lucky 7 Marathon- we're trying something new and outrageous to celebrate our seven year anniversary!
The writing marathon will involve thirty minute sprints for a total of seven hours. Scheduling is flexible. Click on image or here for details. The idea is not to have a polished, perfect story every sprint, but to see what happens to your style, voice, imagination, and idea bank under fire. Join us for the experience. $10 entry, $100 prize each in poetry and flash. Guest judges Meg Pokrass and Brent Terry.  Factum 1, by Robert Rauschenberg (USA) 1957. Fair use policy, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Dearest Readers and Writers, Just a note to remind you how grateful we are for your words, your eyes, and your ears. Thank you for reading the poetry and stories of your peers. Thank you for taking a chance and sending in your words. Thank you for writing to the prompts we choose. In curating the challenges, it is always my hope that an artwork might open a doorway for you. Each time, I know that has happened because of the flood of entries we receive. This is just to remind you that your work matters. We can only post a selection of entries here each time, but we are grateful for every entry and for every one of you. This ekphrastic family is a miracle. love, Lorette ** Do the Math T for trouble, ‘cuz nowadays there is no Ike to like, add up facts sitting out there, bird on a wire, world on fire, blood runs across days of death soldiers, children – none safe vacations on a lake, calm trees no shield from danger, Chicago blaze in ’58, angels unsaved nuns prayed in vain, burned habits repeat, tomorrow flip calendar, shooting of the week do the math, add up facts- anger reigns like air raid, scramble under desk, pulled knees up to chest, smudged face, humanity disgraced, from Dwight to nights afraid, time turned sideways days of death, escape to lake swim away on waves, trust not a red tide, time running crimson weeps a praying mantis Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson is a poet with a BPS in Behavioral Science, who writes creative non-fiction and poetry on topics of bullying, teen experience, animal rights, nature and environment. She advocates for captive elephants, rescues feral cats and loves kayaking on calm lakes. Dickson's poems appear in journals including Misfit, New Verse News, Open Door and The Ekphrastic Review. ** Captiva "Touch the spindle, Aurora!" The Sleeping Beauty, 1697 "Whatever gets you through the night, It's all right, it's all right -- Out of the blue or out of sight...." John Lennon "Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I will move the world." Archimedes Unhooking the fish at dawn as the sun rose, golden, over the island, images of nature were translated into the beginning of another canvas, its surface illuminated in pieces like a collage created with coded messages -- or does art begin with a question? For example, why does the sepia portrait of a man resemble Dwight David Eisenhower although it is probably one of the artist's ancestors? A father-figure, perhaps or a general in civilian clothes, home from the war in suit and tie for the business place, in an office far distant from the primal world; from the golden bird who flies from the tip of a paint brush to sit on a twig-like branch, suspended over an illustration of 2 trees -- saplings growing side-by-side from the roots of a pure white canvas the abstract essence of a cloud made with house paint leftover from painting cabinets filled with clues: how to reach the center of oneself by boat (a journey without an itinerary following the new day into the next painting) through scenes where art soars above the waters surrounding Captiva island.... Here, a fragment of the sky is background for an ancient treasure map left in Florida by a Spanish king-pin, Ponce de Leon, the life blood of history dripping on calendar pages from the past, blurred and unreadable dates and numerals turned sideways as in a dyslexic manuscript following a pathway of pictures; one that resembles a praying mantis (the zoology of entomology) an insect-size hope for victory as soldiers storm burning buildings, igniting the future beneath a last, lost puzzle piece when the fish flops at dawn, and Aurora, a captive of passion learns about life, pricking her finger as she spins toward the fulcrum, a giant-size "T" -- a captive of dreams -- the morning light with traces of night -- axle or spindle attached to one wheel when everyone knows it takes 2 to move. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. Honored multiple times by The Ekphrastic Review, her recent book, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020, searches for relationships in poetry and art. In 1998, she experienced a museum-wide exhibit of Robert Rauschenberg's paintings and sculpture displayed at The Menil, the MFAH and the CAMH. The diversity of his work, like a collage of the world waiting to be understood, is astonishing. In Fulcrum 1: No Primal Stroke, the artist "captures" his own dyslexia with calendar pages turned sideways; and his personal experience in the military with sepia illustrations of soldiers and war. He acknowledges, with a bold and powerful "T," a fulcrum, the possible inflexibility of having one wheel -- an end-stop; or, as an artist grouped with the Dadaists and Pop Art, the "T" may be personal, Cy Twombly. ** What Changes, What Stays Outside, dusk is settling in. I start to pull the kitchen window shade down, but freeze at a sight. The blue light glowing through the backs of the butter-yellow ranuncula petals stops me. The flowers have altogether changed. They’re translating this gloaming into a gift. My camera can’t capture the light, can't capture it right. What name should I give them now? This well-worn paper—aged in the sun and speckled with rain. I can still see the stains left by the drops. The way water becomes visible. The way water can stay. Bethany Rohde If Bethany Rohde could spend her coffee break anywhere in the world, it would be in the imagined place she used to draw as a kid (and still does). She'd lean back against the smooth trunk of a shade tree surrounded by undulating, grassy hills and watch the sway and flow of the blades. Bethany's poetry and prose may be found in such places as Moms On Poetry, Emily D.Tea Traveler, Tweetspeak Poetry, T.S. Poetry Press' Every Day Poems, as well as in the e-book, Casual, published by T.S. Poetry Press, and in the anthology e-book, Starry, Starry Night, published by The Ekphrastic Review. ** Everlasting Regret Like trees entwined branches once we were here, no doubt our bond of love no one could tear. Like a couple of male and female birds with one eye and one wing in other words, We needed to live together to fly, our eternal vows nothing could untie. We never thought our love would slip away Like an old calendar faded away. Toshiji Kawagoe Toshiji Kawagoe, Ph.D. is a professor at Future University Hakodate. He lives in Hokkaido, Japan. His haiku was selected in the 21 Best Haiku of 2021 at the Society of Classical Poets and his poems in classical Chinese have been published in the anthologies of Chinese poetry. His academic works in economics are also published in many books and academic journals. ** Factum 1   Emily Tee Note: a found poem based on erasing parts of the newspaper article “Stuff happens” by Adrian Searle in The Guardian, Tuesday 28 November 2006] Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers. Now retired she has recently started writing poetry. She has had some pieces published in Ekphrastic Review challenges and in print with Dreich magazine, with others forthcoming with Dreich and elsewhere. She lives in England. ** Animus On this day, a golden oriole sings to greet the dawn. Numbers blur, blatantly. Moments drip incandescently by. Mercury in retrograde again, some fool trying to kiss the sky. This is how the days pass. The love note of a discarded wrapper serenades an empty street. Moments drip into each other like overturned paint cans. Fragments of memories collage past onto present. A window frames the afternoon. A glass overturned spills unasked for light. For a moment, everything is suffused in gold; tomorrow, a welcome guest. Today, an encore of regret. Siobhan Mc Laughlin Siobhan Mc Laughlin is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co. Donegal in Ireland. Her poems have appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The Waxed Lemon, Drawn to the Light Press, The Poetry Village, Bealtaine magazine and other online journals. She recently featured on The Ekphrastic Review Podcast. Find her on Twitter: @siobhan347 ** Disparate I don’t know what you meant to say when you let the sun and sky bleed through the wall. Or when you pinned up your mother’s tea towel printed with a calendar, never used to dry a dish. And who’s the man smiling while a city burns? On the inside of my childhood bedroom cupboard door were pictures of a naked model and a beach and smiling long-haired boys. There were no snapshots of trees and no red T’s and no black gashes, blood or creeping grey things. I’m still looking in your cracks and corners for hidden codes. You’re still erasing all my smudges looking for my pencil sketch. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman: "I am a developing Poet living and writing in the coastal village of Lake Tabourie, New South Wales, Australia. I have recently been published on Viewless Wings.com." ** And a New Dream Gets Us Involved Further* All the months pasted, fall standing on its head. February and October smeared with barn-red as if were winter and fall of slaughter, applewood smoking bacon and ham to nourish another year. December’s either torn away or whitewashed-- started typing “whitewatched,” maybe was right. Freudian Sears-and-Roebuck cotton slip of words not far removed from my great-grandmother’s, ordered from a catalog proven solid as the Bible. Christmas catalogue arrived later, sparkling lights and bright ornaments in branches across its cover, all Eisenhower- and Lionel-train-diorama festive. Rauchenberg’s birds are plainer—in dun, concrete. rust-and-linseed, tire-black—more to the point or maybe wheel as it turned on fresh super-highways, boxed in Detroit steel and a whiff of prosperity at premium, thirteen-and-nine-tenths-cents a gallon. The branches are paint, winter-black and simple, where those birds hop. Windows of math tables; pair of birches overlooking lake, clouds; firemen scrambling, smoke billowing above a laundromat, brick façade with its mouth spreading mid-scream. Magenta capital T at the bottom-right. For truth? For taken? For “That is the way it was on this day,” Uncle Walter Cronkite’s sign-off? Was he related to the Uncle Walt we saw on T.V. Sunday nights, camped in the living room around his Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, Daniel Boone, Zorro-- whitewashed Americana? T as in train as it circled its mountain at Sears, framed in a picture-window house-big from Thanksgiving to New Year’s? And is that T in the corner magenta? Or maybe its faded carmine. Something like the bird over the calendar, dripping. Time bleeds. Folks just don’t mention it or name darker shades which could fill in that letter. Jonathan Yungkans *Title taken from the poem “The Big Cloud” by John Ashbery, from his collection April Galleons. Jonathan Yungkans is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer whose work has appeared in MacQueen's Quinterly, Panoply, Synkroniciti and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the Clockwise Chapbook Prize and was published by Tebor Bach in 2021. ** The Year We Went Without One Factum We thought a lot of what we said. What we did with our coats. What stains wouldn’t come out in the wash. Those were the years. We were tired before we even awoke. And we awoke often. Fearing that we might not be able to do it much longer. Getting by on a song. Or a ghost always trying to make a name for itself. Far away from the camera. And the ears of the little ones. Those were the years. We put mustard on everything. The windows. The birds. The days that turned our lives into a joke of some kind. When one could live on a diet of aspirin. And pot roast. Or dreams we’d let sleep. Less they made too much out of the headlines. Those were the years. Every street had its own fire. Its own telephone. Even the pine trees would smell of fake pine. And all the rest was a number. Aspiring to be something cold and preoccupied with more numbers. Or even more of a bum steer. Something starting with “T” we could most likely resist. Turning into art. Or a case for never opening one’s mouth. Mark DeCarteret Poems from Mark DeCarteret’s manuscript The Year We Went Without have been taken by The American Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Guesthouse, Hole in the Head Review, Meat for Tea, Nixes Mate Review, Plume Literary Journal and Unbroken. ** Painted by Time Memories are washed out and faded within the busy bustle from a barrage of days that spray out in rapid fire leaving the mind filled with holes and shell-shocked into a monotonous daze. Years begin to disappear before they even begin, covered by the thick, primer of time. But this is no painted masterpiece-- rather a suffocating glaze that dulls and destroys the blooming creativity of the mind. This calendar has seized to be an open frame of opportunity and is now a crippling chart of obligation. It’s lathered with layers of responsibility, to-dos, and absolutely void of rest and relaxation. Justin Farley Justin Farley is a poet and author from Indianapolis, Indiana. He has been published in journals such as Calla Press, wrkwndr, and The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. He has released three collections of poetry, all available on Amazon. Follow him on instagram @justinfarleypoet or visit his blog @ www.alongthebarrenroad.com ** Collage Caged by time, relentless month After month, day after day I cleave to my twig and sing. Fond, long ago memories Of those hot days in Lombardy, The two trees by Lake Como, Cracked olives littering the ground, The sun captured in an orange square Carried to my bar-less cage like a gift To make me sing. Does T stand for trespass? Am I free, under the presidential gaze? Above the burning buildings All life aflame, in pieces, around me As if we could glue this life together. Lucie Payne Lucie is a retired Librarian who is writing out and about in Oxfordshire. ** I Want to Stand with My Unvaccinated Lover Give me a place to stand and I will move the world. —Archimedes When a launderette smokes its billowing breath, I think of December’s grin and after cardinals swoop to love the thin branches of a birch duet, we bundle with gloves, our dreams and days astonished. When they leave, they ink our minds. Snow is now a mask. I want to cover my face. The red runs raw of our daily news. Straight rungs on a ladder will rescue us. John Milkereit John Milkereit resides in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Comfortable Place with Fire, will be published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2023. ** dadda, where are you? smoke gets in your eyes your windows your dreams clogs the hunger in your soul the launderette has locked its doors no way to wash out those charred reveries blackened words roiling filing the air to the shape of your torn and smouldering throat head in the dryer not sure what day it is since father left a factotum of manhood on his knees hiding behind trees he walked beyond the calendar’s confines his cranium a colander holding on to the outline of words, meaning forgotten in a forest of torrefied sounds papered terror shakes the hand holding his image, fading into oblivion’s soft arms come in, she says let lines fall like the scratched feathers of a bird and everything will be shaped to a T Simon Parker Simon Parker is a London based writer, performer and teacher. His work has been performed at the Lyric Hammersmith Studio, Hackney Empire Studio, The Place, Somerset House, Half Moon Theatre, Southbank Centre, the Totally Thames Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Simon is an associate artist of Vocal Point Theatre, a theatre company dedicated to telling stories from those not often heard, and providing workshops for the marginalised. He runs creative writing and reading groups for the homeless, socially excluded and vulnerable. ** Distant Mountain Ranges Factions that once pieced together drifted like Pangea. Legend outmuscled reality in the retelling. “You know,” I started to speak up in the small group that was gathered but found myself momentarily stuttering, Dates and almost images poured like a tsunami through my mind. “You know,” I repeated for clarification, “He’d have loved that we all made it.” I looked around the room for acknowledgement. The room wasn’t designed for a gathering of this sort. A sombre one, that is. His love of songbirds and distant mountain ranges pulsed in the forefront of my mind like a shot of electrolytes. The concept of their shared interests left me wondering what about mam? She sat opposite me tucked closely to my youngest sister, Maude. The black clothing suited neither of them. Mam always dressed in bold colours: decisive ensembles of red or bottle green that left her company in awe of her style. Maude, meanwhile, was no stranger to the colour black but the respectful below-the-knee dress and the modest black heels combination was unrecognisable to her punky black days of old. None of her piercings were on show that day, though she could do little to mask many of her tattoos. Dad had his own ones, of course, on account of his time in the service. His penchant for dressing in gentleman’s attire, though, ensured that they were rarely visible. You could almost forget that they were there until he surprised you one day. “Do you think he’d be happy in the suit we chose for him?” I asked aloud as if my thought-to-speech function were unfiltered. I think I was just looking to fill the time with words. “That was his favourite,” mam eventually confirmed. Her words were somehow a mere silhouette of her usual discourse. “I remember him wearing that particular one down at the lake,” my brother Michael added. His voice sounded the most normal of those gathered. His love of fishing means that he often goes large amounts of time without speaking. You could tell that much as the words rolled right off his tongue as if he were unincumbered by the dryness of tongue or throat that befalls most of us when we spend time adjacent to reality like we did that day. “That was my first time there,” I laughed. “My first time seeing you and dad out on the water,” my words dried as if the very mention of water had a reverse effect on my mouth. “How long has it been since he left the paper?” my other sister Nancy spoke for what must have been her first time. “Just short of two years,” mam replied. “Four decades for two years,” Michael did the maths aloud and we all knew it was best not to comment. “And the announcement in the paper?” I asked to move us along, even though I already knew the answer. “All taken care of,” Nancy, the eldest, answered. “Funny,” I laughed as if the punchline had been delivered though there was no joke in these circumstances. “Most people will probably see it online or hear about it by text with the way things are now anyway,” I commented into the communal bowl of the living room clock watching. “Yes,” mam considered, taking a long time with her response. “But he’d have wanted it done that way,” she paused. “Your father.” We all nodded silently knowing that her words were true and that her speech was unfinished. Whether she’d go on to finish verbalising her thoughts though was something that we did not know. “Good and proper. Just like he was,” she eventually concluded with a lilt that could rival the mellifluousness of a songbird in a distant mountain range. Lee Eustace Lee is a writer and poet whose work centres on the themes of relationships, social constructs, and culture. Lee is previously self-published in the creative nonfiction space and is now in the advanced stages of producing a debut novel, a standalone collection of short stories, and a collection of poems. Lee's progress can be followed on his Instagram @creativeleestorytelling ** days unseen barely a few hours since you incinerated ten months and three days of our lives with striking efficiency acumen reserved for days of abandon obliterating those who drop anchor close to the river’s edge the place where the wounds are gaping lesions of your own making your refusal to heal abdicating all but the lacerations of days nothing phantasmal in this pain no chimera or supposition it’s a bull’s eye yet, you formulate still, in capital letters ensuring that the implications are grasped and that no change of heart will punch the clock out of habit not even a bid farewell “Don’t join the book burners” the final summons nothing here to salvage but for the sweet scent of paper Dominique Elliott Dominique Elliott is a documentary filmmaker, poet, painter and professor. She holds an MFA in visual design from UMass, Dartmouth. Her work has been showcased internationally and her documentary Flying the Beam is included in the Eisenhower Presidential Library collection. Her poetry has been featured on the Apple podcast Words In The Air. She lives on a daylily farm in Georgia with her husband and their four cats. ** There Is No Real in Reality There is no real in reality. Look at the evidence Laid out so plainly, Mapped in a collage of memory. Time muddled in a crumpled calendar, Days turned sideways. [Once, a lady framed the page From the free bank calendar With the day Her husband died, As if to pull him back from the dead, Reminded.] Bird flat pressed, Like a wildflower stamped Between the pages of a romance, Perched on a twig, While the shadow of an ant, Always industrious, Crawls dangerously close to the smoke Breathing from the building And the men watching. The T for two’s: White birches twinned on the lake bank; Duplicity of a faded white man. Red and black—blood and ash-- Splattered across a collection of quadrangles Pasted in apparent arrangement, Juxtaposed in combination, Surrounding a mystic motif centered At the heart of such art. A hoarding of things [Depending on the definition of thing]. What Factum? There is no real in reality. Cynthia Dorfman Cynthia Dorfman has practiced ekphrastic writing for the past few years as a frequent participant in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery writing program. She has been a writer, editor, publications director and communications manager in the private and public sectors. Her creative work has appeared on line and in print with the most recent, a short story in The Library Love Letter. ** Cul-de-Sac Two miles every day. At 9am precisely, she will unbolt her side-gate unless there’s snow or ice or a downpour. In those conditions she circuits her kitchen table for an hour, listening to Radio 4. But today is a fine October morning; the breakfast dishes are stacked, the back door is locked, the key is safely in her jacket pocket, so she can escape by the side-gate. As her semi-detached is tucked away at the right-hand corner of the cul-de-sac, she knows the route through the estate by heart. In fact, she could navigate its T shape with her eyes closed: the street is almost as it was when she and Alfred moved in back in 1958. Sadly, not many clipped privet hedges have survived and front gardens are fast disappearing. Young families don’t seem to have the time or the skill with a pair of shears. Tarmac is spreading because wheelie bins and four-wheel-drives need space; though she does miss the privet, the handkerchief lawns, the hydrangea bushes. Not that she’s complaining: there are still sparrows and goldfinches flocking from the street’s remaining sycamores to all those new-fangled feeders. So far, she hasn’t spotted any squirrels or rats sniffing around though she fears it is only a matter of time. But she won’t think about that. Today the sun is almost shining. As she negotiates the pavement, avoiding potholes and wandering cats with bells, she greets passers-by. She’s no longer certain who her neighbours are but if she spies anybody about to drive off, she will speak. Her action normally elicits a wave. And the man whose name is on the tip of her tongue often has a word. She thinks he owned the haberdashers that burnt down. Or was he God when Alfred was the Devil in the am dram’s Mystery Play? The man has the same eyes as God, the same huge, fluffy beard, like a shop Santa. Today, this man, whoever he is, is cleaning his windows because of last night’s Saharan dust. She hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about, but she smiles. He squeezes water from a sponge all over his concrete slabs and asks her how she is. As usual, she tells him that she’s still breathing. He laughs a bit too loudly, as he always does, and says: ‘Enjoy your stroll!’ She waves politely and walks on a little awkwardly. Her left hip is being bothersome again and her stick isn’t much help, but she refuses to give in. Giving in is a slippery slope and she is made of sterner stuff than Alfred. The rumble of the traffic reaches her before she meets the line of cars on the main road. She pauses by the traffic lights, waits for red, crosses carefully and turns towards the lake. But her hip won’t leave her alone this morning. She will ignore it. She will reach her bench. Eventually, she does so and eases herself down with a wince and a sigh. She gulps in fresh air, gazes at a couple of swans gliding by serenely. It is a surprisingly comfortable bench. She didn’t believe it when her nephew explained that memorial benches weren’t usually made of wood these days. Recycled plastic it may be, but it is extremely comfortable. Alfred would have considered it cheap and nasty but he’s not the one who must sit on it. She is the one still here, still waiting, still staring all day at the same old view. Dorothy Burrows Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing flash fiction, short plays and poems. In the last couple of years, her work has been published in various online and print journals including The Ekphrastic Review. Once upon a time, she lived in a cul-de-sac. ** The Factum Of The Matter Is I see it as one chronicle of the subconscious--personal messages 1957 taken by a mad bop secretary splotches of black dripping blood red-- swatches of muddy orange-- inside/outside a yellow rectangle a thin vertical green stalk the red CAPITAL T stands out large under Kruschev beside himself --a pun (?)---two tall twin birches at lakeside photos of a fire-- tragedy reduced to yellowed news --paper-- most images doubles doubled splashed white spaces here and there---images floating in free jazz time...I'm writing this thinking--wow!! what a way to spend the day by checking off each improv image as my subliminal back burner brain finds them not hard to find a red T or even a fire via the 24 hr news team --my 12 month schedule at my lap and twin trees just out the window-- but where the hell if you please do you find a picture of Niki K in this day and age. Daniel Brown Daniel Brown lives in beautiful upstate New York where he writes each morning watching leaves come and go over pond water. He has most recently been published in Mono, Jerry Jazz Musician, Frog Pond and Chronogram. |
Challenges
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