Rain On The River

Rains falling on the Hudson River zone
And deluging the pathways in a park,
Inhibiting the progress of a lone
New Yorker splashing through the semi-dark
Of daylight under leaden clouds, emit
No sound—in physics terms—from forceful strokes
That Bellows used to paint the grime and grit
He juxtaposed with grass and trees, to coax
Enchantment out of gloom ... But don't you hear
Rails clanking, plumes of hissing steam, the spray
In hurried footsteps, and a neigh? The mere
Veracity of physics can't gainsay
Eyes predisposed to hear as well as see:
Rain On The River captures sounds for me!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England.  His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly.

**
​
Ledge
 
The path splits like a river
stitching the lampposts together
below a fractal stack of boulders,
chunky rubs of color off the brush 
and the shoulder below that threatens
to smear towards fall
like a spaghetti strap
that tumbles down the precipice 
and reminds me that most days
your bowlegs take retreating steps
far beyond my sympathies
or sightlines.
 
Still, I think of you as mine
rich as the emerald grass,
some assurance smogging 
fog to the sea like a train’s
cushion of salt along the city cliff
to a metropolitan maze that mocks
our mis-remembered love cage
with its multiples of ribs
twigging out like the world’s first dawn
etching their way through morning,
through dock posts and floating debris
 
to some other side
where, just passing from this view,
I might imagine you.

Sarah Wyman

Sarah Wyman lives in the Hudson Valley where she writes and teaches about literature and the visual arts. She co-facilitates the Sustainability Learning Community and teaches poetry workshops at Shawangunk Prison. Her poetry books are Sighted Stones (FLP 2018) and Fried Goldfinch (Codhill 2021).

**

Double Vision: Looking at George Bellows' Rain on the River
​
George Bellows is much better known
posing punch-drunk palookas,
pounding each other's guts,
and keeping their smashed-nose
faces pointed to the bloody canvas.

But here is something that feels like a
left hook, its visual violence aligned
in a sharp assemblage of slanted lines,
paralleling the distant, blurred embankment,
with the mud-coloured flat river
under the toxic chemical clouds.

Along its length are some warehouses
with a short and empty pier sticking out..
Nearby is a cartman, scavenging coal.
And in the central artery is a train,
pulling its filled container cars along.

Rain-soaked, glistening paths, shaped
like a wavering divining-rod, are where
one itinerant figure is strolling alone.
So we see this little drama  as it unfolds,
below a platform of fractured stone slabs,
painted with thick daubs of gray and brown.

They are as rough as those spent boxers
he drew in broad strokes of dark and light,
smudged on paper from a charcoal stick
that congealed the smoke from cheap cigars
that filled the cheering mouths of boxing fans.
But here a single freight train lumbers along,
with plumes like a punch in my double vision.

Royal Rhodes

Royal Rhodes is a poet who has been writing for the last fifty years. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Ekphrastic Challenges. He lives now amidst Amish farmland in central Ohio.

**

Love and Trains

I took my first train ride when I was in college. My first air flight, too. But train trips became my staple, whether to New York City for the museums or to Washington to visit my oldest friend at school. I loved the noises, the shuddering car speeding on tracks, the tucking away of bags in a compartment above my head. I knew every view and vista from the Yankee Clipper, knew when the spectacular sparkle of Long Island Sound would appear, and when we would sit, steaming and hissing in New Haven as Amtrak switched the power source and the lights went dark. 

More than the lights of a city or the dark cave of a station, I loved the dirty, tired backyards of the cities and towns the train swept through. I saw their sad parts and sometimes the ok parts. I loved the angles of intersection in a small town, when the train was raised high above a main street, running past the corners of old brick buildings with what appeared to be inches to spare. Leaning against the glass, tired of my book, I loved looking at the sections that ran along water the most. We were perilously close to the river or ocean, so close we could tip in if the train jumped the track.  Were we? Was I catastrophizer? I had many hours to contemplate scenarios on many trips, and my thoughts often drifted towards emergency exits and how to pop the windows open, if necessary.

The backyards of houses and the centres of small towns, with their carved gazebos in tiny parks, were my delight. Why run a train so close to where I imagined a Fourth of July concert would happen? Why did people have so many sheds at the end of the backyard?  Why did people dump decades of trash by the side of the tracks? Conversely, what compelled people to garden down to the very edge of the cinders and rails, flush again the flimsy fence where their daffodils or daylilies blossomed and brightened view? 

I have considered these things for decades, riding on the train. Today, I await my ride at a stop on the west-bound commuter rail. No real station at this stop. Just an overhang, barely a shelter, but with the added convenience of an LED sign declaring the time of arrival. The noise from the highway on the other side of the fence is persistent and thrumming. I look down the long straightaway of track and watch the train draw near. Without the cement platform that surrounds trains in a station, I marvel at how tall it is, an imposing engine of transportation. I hoist myself up steps steeper than those I remember, up and into the car on the left, uncrowded at this early hour on a Saturday morning. I shuffle in, gracelessly, and thump myself down by the window, my bags at my feet. And smile a little smile. I am headed to a college town an hour from where I live to visit the man I am in a relationship with, a post-divorce romance for the both of us, a second chapter we arrived at through circuitous routes and painful endings of love and sadness and rupture. Around me, late night college revelers are headed back to their schools, very large coffees in hand and tattered backpacks on the floor. Singletons are intent on their phones, a few riders slumped, asleep already. It is 10:20 a.m. 

We start, and I rest my forehead against the glass. The Washington Street Whole Foods slips by, Abbotts and its freezers of ice cream and gallons of fudge sauce. The 1507 gains cruising speed and I am passing the industrial sections of tidy suburban towns who have the space and inclination to hide their parks and recs department by the tracks, to allow children’s gyms and Dunkin Donuts to set up near the train crossings. I cannot read, not when I can relearn the geography of towns I know well. I am smiling now because I feel no different from the 19-year-old heading to New York City, huddled in a trendy long coat that was not warm, on a 6:32 a.m. commuter rail in February with no heat and no dining car from which to purchase a hot drink. It is thrilling and it is freedom and it is new and different, and I feel that now as much as I ever did.

Barbara Selmo

Barbara Selmo earned an MFA from The John Hopkins Writing Seminars.  She has been a member of writers’ groups over the last 10 years. In 2021, she joined a Grief Writing group with Diane Zinna and went on to participate in three month-long, daily writing circles Zinna led.  Barbara has worked with Rita Zoey Chin, Dorian Fox, and Zinna, all of whom have been extraordinary. Recent publications include “The Gravity of Love” (Dorothy Parker’s Ashes) and “Lunchables” (The Sun.) A craft piece is forthcoming in Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life after Loss (Diane Zinna, Columbia University Press, 2024).

**

Boxing Clever

A player courted, basket, base,
though chose that ball, art students league,
this radical of ashcan school
waxed lyrical from left of field.
What drove to brush ’fore graduate,
reject sport scout, leave commerce part,
withdraw athletics, focal point
of painting as his primal call?

It was the urban working class
of city grime in real rough,
from boxing ring of gruff appeal,
atrocities of gruesome scenes.
Dissenter - Wesley middle name -
he stood for lines, unpopular;
supporting war against the Hun,
defending those against the same.

How dare he paint what had not seen?
His quick response to critics’ form -
‘for had no ticket’ - sportsman talk -
Da Vinci absent, upper room.
For illustrator, books, the norm
to craft response from written word;
so seasoned ethics, politics,
he framed stark, dark, reality.

If river, rain and misty steam
were all ingrained, washed over work,
then harsher life must be revealed
in lithograph or oily truth.
From elementary blackboard chalks
’twas class controlled his pupillage;
iconoclast up till sad end,
until life ruptured far too young.

Stephen Kingsnorth

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review.  He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com
**

Swimming Prohibited Due to Poor Water Quality.

When I take my glasses off, everything looms
in soft focus, like distant cliffs shrouded in the mist-grey
of what everyone who looks at them is thinking at the time.

Once a thought is born, like each bloom of smoke from
a steam train’s funnel, where does it go? When I look closely
at life, the snaking paths and flat green pastures of it glitter 

in my eye. It’s easy not to see the bent and breaking backs 
of men and the overburdened cart horse; the trees
stripped of leaves and blackened by fire long extinguished by hard rain. 

A river’s clean water turns from blue to the yellow-green of bile 
draining from the hepatic ducts of our homes and factories.
Birds have flown away and a flower wouldn’t dare to raise its face.

The jetty crumbles and the fish float belly up. 

Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman

Linda lives and writes poetry in Lake Tabourie, NSW, Australia in traditional Yuin country, and enjoys seeing her poetic work published in various literary spaces. ​

**

​Progress

Slingshot 
Riverside Park paths
glide through high grass
as Vanderbilt’s New York Central
debouches Hudson River view.

The park
itself, not so innocent.
In the name of conservation, 
eminent domain claimed 
country homes 
of Old New York. 

A pedestrian
bears the strain, braves the stain
of progress, an umbrella useless 
against the gilded drumbeat of time.

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Tiferet, Rust + Moth, and other literary journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com.

**

Hudson Overlook

This Hudson overlook,
Exposed and frigid,
Might discourage another,
But not me.
Compulsion burns.
Glazed schist, Impastoed brine--
I will snatch this place out of time
And pin its soul to canvas.
Art with muscle.
Give me hulking and lurching--
Punchable smog, 
Gouts of gunmetal soot.

Down below, a few desperate souls
Collect gleanings of coal--
Concentrated, impacted grime
As if sublimed from smut of air
My stiff brush grasps the cold mood--
Dapping across canvas
Leaving negative spaces of white--
Perfect weird twin of hoar on paths below
My fingers crack and bleed now,
But a bit of blood cuts the umber nicely
And beefs up coastal verge
Under beaten copper trees.
In time it grows dark, and I pack up.
Not that my painting is finished.
My work is never finished.
It is a held breath —until it hurts.

Anna Gallagher

Anna Gallagher earned a bachelors degree in English and a masters degree in liberal arts from University of Delaware.  She has enjoyed reading poetry all her life.  After retirement she has tried some new challenges, including poetry writing!

**

leaving behind

I looked back
for the last time
on the best of times
standing naked
bare and vulnerable
like trees
in Autumn.

Marc Brimble

Marc lives in Spain and apart from drinking tea and hanging around near the sea, he teaches English.​

**

​Painting the Future
 
The Hudson is cloaked in smoky yellow,
its surface awash in smog and steam
as if the rocks, trees and urban sprawl
are squeezing life from the city’s tide
that I have loved since I was a child.
 
So I paint, my easel perched on a ledge
as I scrape my rage across the canvas.
I conjure a future of oily pollution
and hang it in Paris on a gallery wall.
What do you see? Art or a warning?

Kate Young

Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, andchapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet or on her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk

**

Rain  on the River

To cut the world to pieces – 
            sort the past to the left
the future to the right

leave the bare boulders
            to the present,
the winding path,
            its empty benches,
the soaked green,    
    
those trees
harsh with branch and twig
and the steam billowing
from yesteryears’
             locomotive

all will leave 
             our sight forever – 
as now will turn into then.

Barbara Ponomareff​

Barbara Ponomareff is a retired child psychotherapist, writer and occasional painter and translator. Her poetry, memoirs and short stories have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. She has published two novellas: A Minor Genre and In the Mind’s Eye and is very much drawn to ekphrastic writing. Barbara lives in southern Ontario within walking distance to Lake Ontario.

**

​How to Capture Dreich on Canvas

Rain falls.  Rain always falls here.  The hungry river is nourished, fattened by the constant fall.  The emerald field of the park is sodden and saturated, its path gleaming like a silver tributary as lone walkers bob along, umbrellas dragging like sails.  The droplets enliven a train's steamy plume, a dragon hissing its progress through spindles of winter trees bending in the breeze.  The same gust spritzes my face with drizzle, glazes it like the gleaming granite boulders I stand behind.  The grey river is not quite in flood, girded by the heavy iron of the railway track and the sparse trees enduring this dreich downpour.  I know the rain is needed, that it is part of life.  The water cascading from the sky to the land, into the river, is a cycle, ancient, inescapable.  The river was here before the park, before the city now crowding along its banks.  It carries not just today's waters but all the rains, the storms, the mists and mizzles from the lands it has already crossed, carries on towards the sea, to the ocean.  I, too, add to this ensemble as salt teardrops slide down my face.  Like the rain clouds I have no choice but to let the drops flow, let them mingle with the rain, flow out to the sea.

Emily Tee

Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands.  Having been born and raised in Northern Ireland she's seen a lot of rain during her lifetime. She's had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review Challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print.

​**

The Way Forward

The necklace of railcars whisper
in metallic clicks before belching out
clouds of white smoke. Thick cotton mists silhouette grey
the glitter of distant buildings. The river,
at the touch of the pale sky,
wakes alive in golden tints of a fading summer.
Bituminous realities litter the ochre banks,
while men with cracked lips, worn hands, stoop
to scavenge for an answer
to their tired drizzle of prayers.
Tall trees with bare branches, gleaming barks sentinel
the rain-slicked change of winds.
Through the endless carpet of emerald green,
a silver road meanders,
all the way up to the rocks of glistening hope.

Preeth Ganapathy

Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Star 82 Review, Panoply Zine, Visual Verse, Quill & Parchment, Shotglass journal, Sparks of Calliope, Tiger Moth Review, The Sunlight Press, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Her microchaps A Single Moment and Purple have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for the 2023 Best Spiritual Literature.

**

Thoughts On Rain on the River, by George Bellows 

This is American rain
on an American River,
not  European Renaissance rain
grand old deluge
falling on sunshine Cathedrals,
but dirty American rain
on a muddy brown yellow river
gray snow sludge train tops
flowing through the heartland,
this is America stripping off 
its shortpants and declaring 
this is us this US with ashcan 
underbelly and smoke clogged
skies and by God pride 
of mud green brushstroke
landscape and working folk
small like beasts along the shore,
beauty in the common experience 
thankful for our uniqueness
until the epoch noble vision
strips burned out forests of green
and souls drown in squalid rivers
and artists like Bellows
spin in their graves.

Daniel W. Brown

Daniel W. Brown began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. world. Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, and he has hosted a youtube channel Poetry From Shooks Pond. He was also included in MId-Hudson's Arts Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23 and writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination.

​**

Perspective

                                                 "...thousands of feet above the Brenner Highway,
                                              we began to slide down the air quietly as a snowflake...
                                                      the plane in a long slip like a scimitar curve,
                                                         the ground rising up to meet us, the trees
                                              growing larger, focusing automatically, as in a microscope..."
                                                                            "Italian Days,"*  Charles Wright


Where did the rain stop and the river begin?     In English, it is said
that landscape means both the land itself     and a painting of the land,

that "scape" means "scope," the way an artist     balances in an ethereal
world, high above the scene below     recreating (or embellishing)

mountains and waters with an inner eye     as the composition moves
forward, the river parallel     to a train, like a belt girding the painted earth,

its trees and verdant grass (greener in the rain)     and the rocky ledges
of Riverside Park.     As a natural setting is altered by art, Bellows

moves beyond his earlier work --     "River-Front On A Hot Day" --
a canvas where tenement children     strip away their clothing for a swim

in the Hudson, waters that become static     in "Rain On The River"
as if a primal microcosm on canvas     attests to New York,

the way it appeared     when Henry Hudson's ship, the Half Moon,
discovered  a body of water in the New World     its boundary-territory

explored by indigenous people, the Mohawks.     Otherwise untouched,
and ripe for the future, Riverside     became a path for the Hudson Railroad

(originally the Hudson-Mohawk line)     its 20th century destiny to pass
the Park's Cherry Walk, to carry cargo     past trees, the Sakura, their petals

like pink snow -- a gift from Japan --    where art can look down, from the right
to the left  (one could say east to west)     the way the morning sun rises,

although it's a grey day today, in Riverside Park.     The dock below the railroad
seems to disappear in fog     that envelops the other side of the river,

a thick veil over mountain-like shapes     so Bellows' canvas resembles,
in its perspective, Hokusai's "Great Wave"     a wood block print

where Mt. Fuji, bedded between the cresting waves     is so far back
in the picture, it looks like a mountain in miniature     its size like the cap

of an otherworldly being --  a gnome, perhaps --     who can guard any treasure
buried underground...and at the end  of Bellows' dock     where my perspective changes,

as it always does, to love      while white steam bellows from the train engine --
                                                                       transport to where my heart has been. 


Laurie Newendorp

Laurie Newendorp has been honored many times by the Ekphrastic Challenge.  Her book, When Dreams Were Poems, explores the relationship of words to art and nature.  *She could locate only an auditory copy of Charles Wright's "Italian Days"  -- what is a poem without a page?  The name of the Hudson Railroad, owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, was changed to The Hudson River and New York Railway.

**

Just a Job
 
After ten years as a freight brakeman in Atlanta, I got laid off last week. Nothing personal, they told me. In Washington, even Hoover said things were bad. In August, Jane and I got married and moved into a one-room basement apartment. In October came Rose, our baby girl. Now, two months later, I lost my job. 
 
“I’ll look up North,” I said, as Jane sat on the edge of our bed. I’d heard that trainmen were needed there. “I’ll send money home.” 
 
“Promise me you’ll stop drinking, too.” Rose suckled on Jane’s breast. “It’s me or the bottle, like I’ve told you. Now we have a baby.” 
 
“I promise.” It was easy for me to say. I’d told her that lots before. 
 
When I arrived in New England, the yardmaster hired me on the spot. The rail workers that milled around his office grumbled. They likely wanted a friend to get the job, not me with my Southern accent. Afterward, I walked up a hill in a park and stood on some rocks. In the December rain, I looked at where I’d be working. The paper mill next to the river was big, but the nearby rail yard looked small.  
 
On the midnight shift, the engineer, conductor, and another brakeman joshed among themselves, but they didn’t speak much with me. They needed to see what kind of brakeman I was, I guessed.  
 
The conductor and I huddled at the top of the lead track that led downhill into the yard. With his lantern, he examined his switch list that gave information on the cars. “Whoa…lookee here. Three hopper cars. Coal. Haven’t seen it in years.” Sleet pelted our faces, and he cleared his throat. “Ride these into Track Three. It’s empty. After fifteen car lengths, tie ‘em down with a hand brake.” He put his gloves on. “Careful now. Another crew’s working on the other end of Three. It holds only ninety-two cars.” He returned to the engine. 
 
As the three cars started to coast, the rails groaned under their weight. On the rear car’s icy raised platform, I gripped the brake wheel. These three squat New York Central cars were heavy. Rain that day had saturated every chunk of coal in the open cars. Slushy flakes cut my visibility to a few car lengths. As I entered Three, snow-capped logs on flatcars on Tracks Two and Four whirred by. We were rolling at fast clip. That was okay. I’d done this lots before. 
 
But not in winter. At night. In a strange yard. Adrenaline flickered in my gut.
 
In a minute or so, I’d be done and would walk back to the engine. I’d chug some calming whiskey from the pint bottle in my pant pocket. It’d be my first drink since leaving Atlanta. 
 
After ten car lengths into Three, I started to spin the brake wheel. I wasn’t used to wearing a heavy winter coat and such thick gloves. The brake shoes clamped on the wheel. It slid, as smoke and sparks spewed and screeched. If I got off and abandoned the cars, they’d only go faster. They’d kill men at the other end of Three. I’d get fired, or worse.
 
But I’d promised Jane that I’d send money. 
 
I sprinted on icy ballast rock, over crossties, through sparks and steel-on-steel smoke, with only a few feet of clearance to the boxcars on Two. I was now at least forty car lengths into Three. These monsters wouldn’t stop. On the second car, I spun the brake wheel. Same thing! The sparks, smoke, and screech only doubled. We were going even faster. 
 
I raced to my final hope, the third and lead car. Wire from a car on Two snagged my sleeve. I stumbled but regained my footing. I climbed to the car’s ice-crusted handbrake and spun it into a blur. I was at least eighty cars deep into Three. In seconds, I’d crash. 
 
The cars slowed to a stop. The screech and sparks had halted, but acrid fumes began to blanket the ground, as the wheels pulsated with heat. I staggered into breathable air and sat on a rail on Two. I’d be able to send money home, after all.  
 
“Who’s there?” A lantern poked through the sleeting night. 
 
I had no breath left. “We’re…workin’ on…” I filled my lungs. “…the other end of the yard.” 
 
“Yeah, we’re on this end.” The brakeman pointed with his lantern beam. “We heard a helluva racket. Cars’ brakes must have frozen up. Then nothing.” A few car lengths from the coal hoppers stood black tank cars.
 
“They’re…heavier than they look.” Gradually, I caught my breath. “That wet coal…almost got away from me.” 
 
Shaken, I walked back to the engine. “We need to go back into Three and drag the coal cars back to this end of the yard,” I said.
 
“I was worried you couldn’t stop them.” The conductor shined his lantern on the switch list. “Says here they weigh a lot.” He looked up. “More than cars with lumber we usually see for the mill.” He glanced again at the list. “I didn’t check their weight, till after you’d started riding them into Three.” 
 
When the engine stopped near the coal cars, the conductor and I got off and stepped into the lingering smoke. He looked around, bent over to touch a rail, but recoiled. “Still hot.” He shook his head “Sorry. I had no idea. How…how did you stop ’em?”
 
“Been doin’ this for ten years.”
 
“Make the coupling and let’s get out of here.” The conductor got back on the engine.
 
While hidden from the others, I climbed up a car ladder, reached into my back pocket, and tossed the unopened bottle onto the coal. 
 
“What was that?” The conductor flicked on the cab light when I returned to the engine.
 
“Sounded like somethin’ broke.”
 
Not broken, kept. 
 
“When’s payday? I need to send money home.”
 
Bill Wilburn
 
After college, Bill Wilburn worked as a news reporter for four years. He left as an Associated Press Writer to begin law school and a career as a lawyer. Bill has written scores of professional articles for law reviews and journals. He also freelanced op-ed pieces for The Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Times Herald, the Baltimore Sun, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Bill has written novels, short stories, and comic pieces. He is working on a memoir. Bill speaks fluent German, and lives with his wife in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

**

Hudson River, 1903
 
Under a fog-shrouded
landscape, I sit here
on that granite ledge 
above Riverside Park
where we spent endless
hours in conversation.
In tight embraces
we witnessed
bellowing puffs 
of dark gray
smoke obscure 
a locomotive’s journey 
on the New York 
Central route, 
a journey I had hoped
you would never take. 
 
Today, a bank of rain 
swollen clouds vies 
for my attention
while a restless wind 
adds music to the day,
reminds me of sad 
melodies we often heard.
From this solitary post
near two mature 
white birch, my mind
recaptures moments
we shared years ago.
 
Jim Brosnan
 
A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019) copies are available [email protected]. His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word (Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He is a full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. 
 
**

Muddy Trails

Alone is the sound
of rain,
spatter melting away-
and the stories not left behind.
The purpose is here
and the purpose is now
in swathe by the mossy cliffs-
a crow caws at start of the day,
definite as death.

Where no one walks,
the ground orchids span-
as yet breathing, hopeful as yet.
Journey through stone walls
guiding the roadway into western ghats,
the truth of muddy trails.
Tunnel ahead 500 metres.

Alone are the dreams
and tales of belief-
the placard reads ‘Mr. Alok’ at Pune airport,
now as forty-eight years ago.
A cloud burst striking weary waters
in a youthful escapade.

Abha Das Sarma

Author's Note: My brother Alok, who passed away nine months ago, had gifted me my first flight ticket,  for Poona (now renamed as Pune). 

An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. 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, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. 

**

Life As It Is

From a craggy ridge

slabs of slate grim and dark
bare black branches stand guard
a  freight train trails clouds of steam
a jetty leads into ghostly waters

Horse pulling cart of coal
scavanged from the littered foreshore
boats lost in mist
on the far shore loom wharves and warehouses
rain dripping over man, beast,and machinery

Gritty, urban scene
Muted colours - greys, browns and black
stark realism
yet a sense of  hard lived lives
a picture of life as it's lived

Sarah Das Gupta

Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge who really enjoys this artist's ability to combine gritty realism with a sense of beauty in ordinary, working lives.

**

The Spot

I have been hiding in this hillside spot since I was seven years old. I discovered it when a group of neighbourhood boys rallied together a round of hide and seek. While they searched, I scrutinized the large men working on the trains.  They were powerful and strong, covered in soot and sweat. Those boys never found me and ended up leaving me there as they dispersed at sunset for their homes, and I got my butt whooped for getting home so late and covered in dirt. But I didn’t care. All I cared about was that spot and the trains. 

I saved that spot just for me.  I went every day after school just to watch the trains and their workers. When I got older, I would smoke cigarettes and watch as my puffs mingled with the train’s, making us one. I ended up on those tracks working 12-hour days for the last 21 years. When I would think of it down on the tracks, I would squint up at the spot wondering if there was a small kid who had replaced me there. With a family and house and work, I haven’t found respite at the spot since…well I don’t even know. It’s one of those things that happened in your life one last time, and the occasion seemed so ordinary that it was sure to happen again, but it never does. Like the last time I picked up my son before he got too tall and too independent to need carried around.

I have been here every day this week, in my work clothes and carrying a paper bag with a ham sandwich, watching the younger guys still working. I follow their movements, my hand twitches. Tomorrow will be the day I tell my wife. It must be tomorrow, because the day after she’ll be expecting the paycheck to take to the bank. I flick the butt of the cigarette over the edge and light another.

Samantha Gorman

Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. 

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working 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 Farfalla, by Emilio Pettoruti. Deadline is August 2, 2024. 

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. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​
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4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. 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  PETTORUTI CHALLENGE in the subject line.

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7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, August 2, 2024.

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.

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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. 

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​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
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16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.

Not to Lose Grasp on Fate
 
Dear Antigone,
 
You knew you were born from
Troubled parents and tragedy.
 
Tell me
What did they tell you 
When you asked about
Your grandparents?
 
Your parents
They weren’t 
Worthy of you.
 
How did it feel being clutched
By the sorrowed hands of the one man
Who was supposed to protect you?
How feeble he was in the end.
 
You did mourn the death of your father
But in what way was it any comfort?
 
You lost two brothers
To power:
 
Polynices is dead.
 
In mourning you found your freedom.
You defied cruelty with courage.
 
You were to be buried alive
But you hanged yourself
Not to lose grasp on fate
 
Of death you came
To death you returned
You were bound by destiny
But you broke your chains.

Mahdi Meshkatee

Mahdi Meshkatee is a UK-born, Iranian poet, author, and artist. His translation of the children’s novel Witch Wars by Sibéal Pounder has been published by Golazin Publication Company. His work has been published by October Hill Magazine, Nude Bruce Review, and Inscape Magazine. His writings are a continuity of attempts at decoding himself.

**

To Marie Spartali Stillman Regarding Antigone

You paint her as generic grace  --
her deed more featured than her face  --  
defiant in defense of rite
immoral rule denies to spite

those filled wirh fear of death's decay

becoming feast as savaged prey
for swarm bewinged that tortures those
who witness but dare not oppose.

unless possessed of special strength
by faith that follows to its length
the hope that buries in its soul
the justice wrought by its control

that never shrinks from moment seized
to leave such evil unappeased.

Post Scriptum

So cleverly beneath this scene
interred is message left to glean
 that fame witheld by men begrudged
has been denied by gender judged.

Portly Bard

Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.

Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

​**

Anorexia

I was sent to a cave to starve for this:
for throwing ashes over you,
a poor man’s burial, brother,
but it’s as though I turn the vultures 
away with my hand each time they 
arrive to peck your uncovered flesh.

I was sent to a cave to starve for this.
Anorexia my grief, my thin anger.
I wasted away through choice,
brother, just as Creon chose to punish 
you by refusing oils, choral
tributes, a crown, swaddling. 

I sent myself to a cave to starve for this.
I chose the sun’s absence, the weight
of death falling away from my bones.
I chose the one thing that I could 
control, sister, no matter how loud
you whispered they are coming, coming.

Who is coming to save us, sister?
Not myself. Not you. Not the vultures 
who are beautiful and hungry.
No. No one is coming to take death 
from us, like a prize. Only I throw 
the dust. I decide what is enough.

​Jennifer Harrison

Jennifer has published eight poetry collections (most recently Anywhy, Black Pepper, 2018). Two new collections are forthcoming in 2024/2025. Awarded the 2012 Christopher Brennan Award for sustained contribution to Australian poetry, she currently chairs the World Psychiatry Association’s Section for Art and Psychiatry – and loves an ekphrastic challenge.

**

Ceremony
 
No mourning bell, no stranger’s deference, no bowed heads
or doffed caps, watching the procession through busy streets.
 
No carnations spelling ‘BROTHER’ in capitalised florid woe,
no hymns sung off key or hollow platitudes from second cousins.
 
No weak sandwiches and cold tea, no sympathetic faces,
no awkward silences in black Sunday best or clutched handbags.   
 
Just a darkening sky, where clouds silently rage at insolence
and crows screech above mercilessly, declaring, “He is dead”.

Stephanie White

Stephanie White is a teacher from Nottingham, England. She has recently taken tentative steps into writing and submitting poetry. When not indulging in writing, she is a regular wild swimmer.

**

Antigone in Ecstasy

and though Oedipus in Spirit 
with a breasted chest, 
she is a heaving sister,
there, wild, raven waves
bound but
Standing. 

Then the heavens open 
ushering vultures, 
to feast on shared flesh, 
wasted bloodlines dried on 
this broken cliff
in these hills, body 
Rotting.

Defiance on her lips.
Appleseeds sprinkle down 
fingertips to this
wasted body covered in Rites 
to curls and shadows. 
The indecency 
of a red shawl. 

Given a type of burial. 
Ismene, 
Pleading 
for time’s wind to lift them.
Waiting. 
Kneeling, in a type of
Thaebean anti-prayer. Still,

clouds brighten
against mountaintop auras 
beneath smudges of night at end.
Heaven’s smoke provokes these, 
their only arms.
Lifting,
in a rapture of tragedy. ​

C.E. Layne

C.E. Layne enjoys and applauds characters who aggressively surrender to being mediocre. A long, exhausted, and failed perfectionist, C.E. Layne now only overanalyzes herself, by herself, in a room with a couple of windows and a great view of a dark lime green swamp, now called A Lake. She graduated with a BA in English Lit from a university in Las Vegas, got a Master’s in business to compensate for lost time, and has yet to be published. C.E. Layne participated in PocketMFA’s Spring Fiction Cohort and is thrilled to be invited to participate in the Summer Residency. She’s loved by those who gave her life, those who keep it watered, fed, and worth something more, and relied upon by two dogs for food, shelter, sun, and belly rubs.

**

Ismene’s Dream
 
The caverns of her mind
The darkness of the night
The dream she can’t escape
She turns her head away
 
One sister chose the Gods
One sister chose the King
One sister chose to die
One sister chose to live
 
She sees a single gravestone
The dream she can’t escape
The darkness of the day
The caverns of her mind

Kathleen Cali

Chicago-born and Midwest raised, Kathleen resides at the Jersey Shore. Her poetic interests include formal and modern poetry and haiku. Always the student, she enjoys poetry writing workshops and working with her local library. Other interests include historical fiction and photography. Kathleen enjoyed a career as a senior auditor and educator and served as an assistant professor of business following receipt of her MBA. Technical writing and editing were a major part of her profession; now she uses her skills to craft poetry. Her poetry has appeared in  The Ekphrastic Review; her haiku was published in her local community’s magazine.

**

​Dreams of Death on a Daily Basis

I dream of dead people 
as if they were still alive,
as if I hadn’t seen them in caskets,
hadn’t noticed their body-shells without souls..

I hugged my father in Tuesday’s dream,
the padded filling of his jacket,
the Ivory scent of his skin
mixed with vanilla scent of tobacco.

I waited for my mother in Wednesday’s dream,
stomping my foot while she smoked
her Kent to the stub, her jungle red
nail polish matching the filter tip’s lipstick stain.

I grieved my twin in Sunday’s dream.
We were born on a Sunday.
She perished in a car accident that hasn’t happened.
Yet.

Like a carrion crow, the accident is
waiting, just waiting. When it happens,
I will give the eulogy.

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Chicken Fat (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her poetry has also appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Vine Leaves Literary, Tiferet, and other publications. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website is www.barbarakrasner.com.

**

​Daughter of Oedipus
 
My words become
wind--ancient and unintelligible--
like a hidden spell inside a tattered scroll
written in a forgotten language.
 
I do not know if I speak of regret
or defiance—either way
the rituals entrap me in endings--
refusing to release me, uncursed.

​Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/.

**

The Cleanest of Ends

​Antigone knew a thing or two about death
and burial, the disposal of bodies. She knew that
the cleanest of ends is to be stripped of flesh
right down to the soul to be released to soar.
 
I didn’t know why the birds were circling the house
of the neighbor lady who lived alone. They swooped
in circles around her yard, settling now and then
in her orange trees or on the antenna on her roof
and on the clothesline where her clean sheets
dry but not taken in and folded still flapped.
The birds had been drawn by what the neighbors
could not detect, closed up as they were in their AC.
 
It wasn’t till someone, alerted by the birds,
called the authorities to come 
get those birds out of the neighborhood
and dispose of what she had already discarded.
But doing so robbed her of the cleanest of ends.
 
Antigone knew and prepared her brother’s body
for the coming of the birds who would release
his soul to soar.  

Gretchen Fletcher

Gretchen Fletcher won the Poetry Society of America's Bright Lights/Big Verse competition and was projected on the Jumbotron while reading her winning poem in Times Square. One of her poems was choreographed and performed by dance companies in Palm Beach and San Francisco, and others appear in datebooks published in Chicago by Woman Made Gallery. Her poetry has been widely published in journals including The Chattahoochee Review, Inkwell, Pudding Magazine, Upstreet, Canada’s lichen, and more. Gretchen has led writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. Her chapbooks, That Severed Cord and The Scent of Oranges, were published by Finishing Line Press. 

**

She doesn't know her name is Ismene.

She slices her hand up through the air, 
The heel of her hand upwards, palm flat, 
As if she were a butler on Downton Abbey 
Delivering a silver tray of sherry glasses.

She can feel her warm tears unclogging 
Last night's mascara. The sisters’ shapes
Have a rhythm of roundness - a Matisse
dance.

Her sister was always more angular, 
Hip bones and clavicle jutting out accusingly. 
They call it complicated grief as if grief 
Wasn't complicated enough…

Already…

She brings her lunch to sit in front of the
picture. 
To let her mind detach like a placenta 
From the uterus. 

Some of the dark shapes are hair, some 
Of the dark shapes are crows, some of
The crows are flying, some of the crows 
Are dead, with their feathers pulled out. 

It's some kind of ritual. 

She unwraps her sandwiches. Almost
Each day now the meal deal gets more 
expensive.

*

The younger sister has hair woven with 
orange threads,
Writhing in the sunshine and wind, 
made from the same paint as the cloth
covering the cold flesh. 
The fabrics repelling each other like North North magnets.

The younger sister looks away. She's never 
Been able to take life head on, the full force 
Of truth in her face.

She needs to hold her hand over her features, 
To hide in the shade, more of a fresco 
Than a statue.

Her skin is painted with petals from the 
hillside. Only momentarily borrowed. 

The crisps sound very loud in the white space 
Of the gallery. The crunch crunch awkward 
In her jaw and ears. But there's nobody 
Else in the room to mind. And the figures 

In the frame are held firm in their own circuit 
Of electricity, which does not include her. 

*

She will sit and eat her sandwich and think 
About her sister, quite separate from the

painting.

With her office clothes and fading hangover,
From drinking too long into the night alone. 
Red wine has always made her weep, after 
more than half a bottle.

Why do we all persist in doing things that are 
bad for us.

And the brother lays cast down on the rocks. 
Crows’ feathers scattered over the cloth on
His stomach. 

Sky is gathering night together quite quickly 
And soon the picture will get too dark to see. 

When she gets back to work she won't remember 
The faces. 
Just the circle they made: turning together 

And twisting apart.

Saskia Ashby

Saskia Ashby is an artist/poet who engages in a wide range of creative activity and encourages other people to enjoy exploring, expressing and experimenting with art. She really enjoys seeing so many perspectives from people to the same image in these Ekphrastic Challenges.

**

​Tragic Theatre

The Floating  Pavilion, Oneonta  NY, 9 pm performance  
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
― Sophocles, Antigone

1.
The stage is raised
round and oaken --
a wheel on which 
fate turns the universe
with another version
of  Antigone's death. Haunted
 
by her brother's burial
(and pain beyond the ancient plot),
the young actress kneels
 
at the center-- hypnotic
with a rope of  leaves
around her head. Her hair
straight and shining
like the dagger in her slim hands.

 2.
Poised and perfumed
with  bath oil, she prepares
to stab the heart -- until
 
a bird flies in  
disrupting the act, its classic  
resolve. Dust flares in the light
along with iridescent wings.
A trembling darkness.
 
Unlike the heroine,
her own soul is still 
in dispute
 
wanting its body back,
and uses this place, this raftered ark
to panic.  

Wendy Howe
 
Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, diverse landscapes, women in conflict and ancient cultures. Over the years, she has been published in an assortment of journals both on-line and in print. Among them: Strange Horizons, Liminality, Coffin Bell,  Eternal Haunted Summer, The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, Stirring A literary Collection, The Orchards Journal, The Copperfield Review and Sun Dial Magazine.  Her most recent work has appeared in  Indelible Magazine and Songs of  Eretz.

**

The Penumbra
 
Dark schooner clouds unfurl
their sails above the roiling sea,
a tempest sweeps her turbid mind, leaving
a calm eye, a determination,
resolution.
 
Here the chorus sings, 
here the crows rise, black exclamations
anchoring their warning cries,  
augurs of could, not will, they
foretell war, death, but also the coming dawn.
They call to the furies; they call to Athena and
Aphrodite. They are the presagers, more than 
what they seem.
 
Antigone ignores them, the scene
Is set, she follows through, a pawn--
What is fated? What is freewill? Choose,
If you can--
 
always, always
listen to the crows.

Merril D. Smith

Merril D. Smith lives in southern New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in publications, including Black Bough Poetry, Acropolis, The Storms, and Sidhe Press. Her full-length collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was a Black Bough Press featured book. Find me: @merril_mds and merrildsmith.org

**

Antigone Speaks
 
I
Smuggled by night from Thebes, his body—limp,
pallid--
sprawls slack across a rock beribboned 
with kelp.
 
Fearful, dear Ismene cannot bear
to look:
turns tear-stained face towards
the north.
 
In this brewing storm, ravens claw
the wind,
croak messages of harsh revenge,
of rage.
 
II
I sprinkle soil, first full rites for him
I loved:
let fall burned petals of roses:
dark shreds.
 
Traitor, King Creon 
named him.
If he was that, then am I also
venal.
 
But hear me: Polynices was true
to Thebes.
His spirit now belongs
to Zeus.
 
III
Ismene! Up and dry 
your eyes!
Even in death, our darling brother
triumphs.
 
Lizzie Ballagher

Ballagher's work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in the UK, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. She enjoys experimenting with formal structures as well as free verse: is particularly interested in how a poem sounds when read aloud.

**

Inquest

The Theban royal family, Jocasta, Oedipus, their four children, Antigone, Ismene, Eteocles and Polynices, and Antigone’s lover/betrothed/husband are all dead or exiled. The Queen’s brother Creon is King, creating a new line. All because of bad luck and tragic coincidences. But what if the story of sphynxes and riddles, of queens given as prizes, of regicide and incest, self-enucleation and voluntary exile (which, if we are honest, does seem rather far-fetched), was a fiction, a calumnious smoke screen to endorse a coup d’état, an upheaval in custom, social organization and religion?

What if Jocasta was Queen and ruler, not a prize, and what if Laius was her old king doomed to die when his time was up, at the hand of a young pretender, and what if Oedipus, the young pretender, was simply an ambitious young man?

And what if Queen Jocasta, because she loved him, when his time was up, offered Oedipus blinding instead of death?

And what if her brother Creon, inspired by new-fangled ideas that replaced the matriarch with a patriarch, saw an opening for himself? What if he killed Jocasta Queen, his sister, and suggested to Eteocles and Polynices, Jocasta’s sons, that they share the throne? And what if he suggested it because he knew his nephews, and that they would never agree to share? And of course, he was right. They quarrelled and killed one another, or were killed.

And what about Antigone, daughter of Jocasta, who should have been the next Queen? What if Creon offered her the choice, exile with her father or death? And what if, after Polynices and Eteocles quarrelled and killed one another or were killed, when Antigone returned with her lover/betrothed/husband, Haemon, it was not to bury Polynices, not to praise him, but to claim her crown? And what if that was the reason Creon had her killed? 

Because funnily enough, after all the tragic killings and blinding and hanging and fratricidal wars, Creon was the only one left.

Jane Dougherty​
 
Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry, Ekphrastic Review and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses.

**

As the Crows Fly
 
The crows unfold their crepelike wings. 
Wise birds, they know it is time to go.
I ask, so soon? My incense still burns;
I perform my rites, I perfume his body with herbs.
 
My eyes linger on the wavy hair
tumbling back on the slab where he lies. 
My fingers recall its softness
and mourn his pulsing, warm caress.
 
But life grasps my arm and guides me away,
to where the crows lead: past wildflowers,
through valleys. I live, and so I must rise.
Dearest one, this is goodbye.
 
In every bond we humans form,
loss has been preordained.
Every hello implies a farewell,
just as every first kiss imparts a chill.
 
Catherine Reef

Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in several online and print journals. She has published more than forty nonfiction and biographical works on subjects including Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. A graduate of Washington State University, Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York.

**

Tragic Flaw
 
Ravens prophetically drew the sky low
squashed the lush below
chased away any foe
and ambushed the earth in limbo
winging wildly for the final blow
of a twins brothers battle throw.
 
It happened long ago
but at another epoch discord  
Spartali recaptured Sophocles’ yearning
by drawing the suspense line
along the pressing glow
of the true twins throw –
that of human and heaven,
which Antigone turns into a shrine
for horizons with divine intimations.
 
She rose to the sacred call
disregarded the royal protocol
ignored the croaking ravens
and laid her brother to rest
under a handful of dust –
her brave reverence
to the law of the divine  
above that of man
despite the suicidal chain
it inflicted as an outcome.
Logistics for heroes.
For literary pundits – a tragic flaw.
For dreamers – a contradiction in terms:
for how come upholding the divine
can be a tragedy and not eleison!
Something must be seriously wrong if earth
is estranging itself from the sky-high worth
since each inch in the universe
is appointed for the precise purpose
of sustaining gravity of life just right.
Take for free Spartali’s poised firmament
descending to its climax low
so we can reclaim our divine flame!
But take not for granted its devout herald
doing that with bare hands –
Antigone – looming large in her art
of right honorable antagonistic catharsis –
not a tragic hero but a goddess
not a mourning sister but a star
not an improbable bride but a bloom
 
if only one could break the gloom
of the man-made fatal flaw
and see the twin flow
of heaven and heart
mutually disguised
meandering mild
on our own daily battlefield.
 
Ekaterina Dukas
 
Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems have been frequently honoured by TER and its Challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021.

**

So Spoke Antigone

I am afraid for what I do,
The world about me
is dark and challenging.
I feel the black clouds
and thunder, which 
wracks the very rocks
beneath my feet, 
speak of doom.
 
The crows, scavengers
of flesh
my own flesh and blood,
ravage my brother.
Is he to travel to the edge
of the world, 
to the Fields of Asphodel
to wander a grey spirit
bereft for all eternity
of the rites of burial?
 
How small, how ignoble
seems obedience
compared to Justice,
to know that even in 
the face of death
you did what is right.
 
My sister pulls me back
to my woman’s role
that little world of spinning,
servants and child bearing.
I raise my handful of dust
in farewell, in blessing
but in defiance too.
 
You will meet my spirit,
Polynices, as one who
risked all, for that
handful of dust.

Sarah Das Gupta

Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK, who has long been an admirer of the Pre-Raphaelites but  knew little of this artist. It has been an interesting challenge.

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working 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 Rain on the River, by George Bellows. Deadline is July 19, 2024. 

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. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​
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4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. 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  BELLOWS 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. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, July 19, 2024.

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 do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. 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. 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! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
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​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
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15. 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!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.