 Lake Keitele, by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finland) 1905 Underwater Escapade I’m an old poem waiting under the surface for my next mission I’ve requested permission to bring my mermaid along Now I’m emerging bursting through the calm water with a new purpose My request has been granted the mermaid’s name is Tanka Now we’re exploding into powerful magic with a new purpose Tanka asked if she could bring Haiku, her porpoise, along Now we are singing Joni Mitchell’s Circle Song loudly and proudly Joni asked if she could swim with Haiku, Tanka and me Now I am waving goodbye to my three true friends as they find new forms I will miss Tanka the most she’s always got extra lines Back under water all seventeen syllables huddle together Marit Anderson Marit Anderson discovered the healing power of poetry when she attended a free library poetry workshop after injuries from a car accident led to closing her psychotherapy practice. When the poetry workshop ended, Marit wanted to create that kind of opportunity in Encinitas, and did it! Her free prompt group, Awaken the Poet Within, has been meeting at Encinitas Public Library in Southern California for over a decade. Her work can be found in Summation: The Merging of Art & Poetry, San Diego Poetry Annual, and Encinitas Review. Dr. Anderson has received a Surfing Madonna Oceans Project Artist Award, and a Proclamation from the County of San Diego honouring her contributions to the arts. ** Phenomenon Becoming the quiet point, where nothing can be, hidden. What makes you believe I can speak Chinese- As a citizen. Who will accept the risk, for my sin. Surely this must be heaven reflected, lines couldn’t lace- Finer geometry- an island cuts through the blue. Natural and approachable- it’s hues of wood and green lay opposite to reality. These days still fickle distances harder to reach. How can I remain anonymous in- this world This day-proved successful… ( Behold ) “Enjoy your life!” When the violence causes, Silence, we must be, mistaken. (The Cranberries) MWPiercy Michael W. Piercy : "At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction, you will find my work, you will find me. Observing memories and the present moment , thinking with an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology, and Science are core of my writing - I have found that I am a synthesizer. Managing ideas which do not always cohere. A manipulator of ideas." ** Lake Keitele Crazy crackling sky Calms downwards into arches, Long, cool, patient, light. Julia Griffin Julia Griffin has published in some online verse magazines, including The Ekphrastic Review. ** Sun-Setting Time A glint of golden light blinds eyes. The sheen slants into the horizon, slides over a line – a separated now from later … then here to beyond. We sit in silence as you gaze at swirls of gulls circling a carcass – listen as they dive into the eddies. Finally, your brush laminates wings to a silver strand of sandy shore; the birds soar from your palette as we stand in awe. Pat Kabra Pat Kabra is a nascent writer, professor and a former diplomat. She teaches at the George Washington University in DC and has published poetry in the Yellow Arrow Journal and the Beltway Quarterly. ** Lake Keitele, 1905 I grew up beside Cayuga, long and cold as a thought you don't finish. What I knew first was the air how it changed at the water's edge, heavier, alive with something that had no name in the inland world. I breathed it in like a question. The water itself I kept at a distance. Beautiful, I said. And meant it. And meant: don't ask me in. This lake is like that. Finnish. An island sits in the middle of it the way an island sits in itself, unreachable, complete, not waiting for anyone to arrive. The zigzags crossing the surface, wind meeting current, they say, or the wake of a hero rowing through myth, I say it's what happens when two silences have been moving toward each other for a long time and finally meet, and hold. Below all of this: the dark. The cold that doesn't know what season it is up here where we are trying to be calm, to be beautiful, Cayuga and Keitele both, to not think about the bottom. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow. ** Shrubs 1. They line their bodies in rust. My mother watches from the window as the shrubs furl into russet, pulling life from the mud glut with mulch. Salt stains speckle the marble countertop. Outside, each plant spears out of the ground, still, listless, like dead bodies searching for water. Each one a faceless idol, worshipped by a set of buds atop the hill in the neighbour's yard. They lean at their graves, hoping life springs out. My mother screams in broken English– all teeth and no gums, a crooked set of rotting seedlings– out to the earth for rain. 2. It’s almost dusk. She hums a melody about waiting for the season to come. Her voice cracks over the bridge like marble, like dirt. All I ever saw was her spending years compacting soil with her bare hands, rationing water among herself and the plants, waiting for a break of burgundy or lavender. Days in the bathroom, drowning her frock in crimson spit, mouthing the reasons she left, over and over again. 3. At night, a hollow sound echoes through the stacked sheets of plywood and timber, the air grows heavy, and the sound of drumming against steel fills our only room. Rain. I step out, stand near the window, and watch my mother already there, smiling for the first time. Moonlight spills through the panes, illuminating her teeth, a sun-bright bloom of stained glass. 4. In the morning, she hems her fingers over the cabinet, glancing between the last tea bag nestled in her hand and water pooling through the front door. The shrubs are somewhere, drowning in the cerulean body reflecting nothing but clouds and the neighbor’s plant, a dense thicket at the edge of the scene. 5. Maybe the neighbours back home were right. Greed would kill eventually. The shrubs always sat, wide-eyed, waiting for rain, losing all they already had– not grateful for what they were given. Back home, my mother took everything for herself without a word, bringing me along, and left. 6. My mother sucks her tongue, the spit glistening like ruby in the half-light. She wraps it over the gap between her front teeth and sighs. She calls me over to the window, points to the neighbour's bush, and tries sculpting a metaphor about how only the well-placed win in this life, and that there’s nothing we can do to control it. Liviru Liyanage Liviru is a 14-year-old writer and student with work published in Voiceworks and enjoys science, music, and taking walks through nature. ** Garlic Moon I curl my hand around the withered, grassy plant and pull gently. A white garlic bulb emerges from the ground, a shock of roots springing into daylight for the first time. I give it a small shake, and the bulb is clean, like a smooth baby moon. I place it gently on the grass beside me and reach for another. The sun beats down on the back of my neck, and the caffeine from my morning coffee starts its parade through my chest. My hands are hungry for this dirt. I glance up at the next row, and Tomas is already so far ahead of me, a whole bundle of garlic plants with their long, straight necks tucked under one arm. I watch the way his giant shoulders move, beast-like, as he reaches and plucks with little effort. Our eyes meet as he looks up. His eyes cut away before he can see the red blush creep across my chest. I shuffle further up the row on my knees and keep my core tight as I pull the little garlic bulbs from the earth. I hear Hannah laughing from behind me. “How do you know if a Finnish man likes you?” “Han,” I warn. “He looks at your feet instead of his own,” she chuckles. “He doesn't like me.” I'm sure of it, but my heart beats faster anyway. I peek at her over my shoulder. “How would you even know? You barely know the guy.” “I don't need to. I've seen the way he watches you.” I yank on a stubborn plant, but the grassy bit comes off in my hand as I land heavily on my ass. I glance involuntarily at Tomas, and he is smiling at the ground. Yeah, he saw that. I stand and brush the dirt from my jeans, then stretch my arms over my head. My back aches from days of pulling nails from second-hand wood. The sleepless sun burns in the sky, and I’m already longing for the lake. Today we are helping a local widow with her garlic harvest. Our host, Denis, loaded all his workers onto the back of a neighbour's truck this morning. We wound through fields of wildflowers and past glass-skinned lakes until we reached the field where we are now. The neighbour was Tomas, and his hand landed on my waist as he pushed me up into the bed of his truck. I can still feel his handprint, like it's been seared on my skin. I step over my row and crouch on the other side, facing Hannah. “I still think we should move here when we retire.” “We could move here now.” I laugh. “Did you win the lottery?” “There's a house in the village for thirty thousand pounds.” I scoff. “You mean a parking space?” She pulls her phone from her back pocket and scrolls a moment before turning it towards me. The picture is a red weatherboard house with white trim. “You're serious?” We had fantasised about staying here, but it was a pipedream. Eventually we will need to go home and face our futures. “If we both put in all of our savings, we could actually afford this. Right now.” Something swirls in my chest, and I squash it immediately. “In cash,” she adds. I sit back on my heels. Hannah stabs her trowel into the soil so she can talk to me with her hands. “You hate your job. You say all the time you wish you could start over, do something else.” “We're doing that. We've travelled the world for six months.” “And aren't you ready to settle down? Have our own fridge again? Running water? Internet that works?” Denis lets travellers stay with him for free, but it's basically house-camping. The toilet is a hole in the ground. Outside. “You have all that money your dad left you, and I've got those shares.” There's a nervous excitement in her eyes, like she's been sitting on this for a while. “You're serious about this?” She nods. “We've been here for two weeks,” I remind her. “In summer. What if we hate every other season?” “You mean when the lakes freeze over, people go ice skating, and sauna every day, and drink mulled wine at the pub?” I cross my arms. This is a real place, not a romance novel. “There's just one little problem we may need to address.” She makes a pinching gesture in the air. My heart sinks. Of course there's a problem. “Since neither of us are citizens, we'd need someone local to be on the title.” Nope. No way. If I'm plunging all my savings into something, I'm not going to give a stranger the ability to take it. Hannah sees the answer on my face. “Or…” she says, and pauses for so long I'm sure she isn't going to say anything at all. “We both need to marry Finnish men.” I laugh. “That's insane.” She shrugs. “I'm pretty sure what we were doing in London was insane. How is that normal, and this”—she gestures around at our friends in the field—“isn't?” My last panic attack came after I took a personal day and my inbox climbed to a thousand unread emails. Hannah found me curled up on the floor, convinced she might have to call an ambulance because I couldn't catch my breath. My inbox followed me everywhere. I'd wake in the middle of the night, log in on my phone, and answer twenty or thirty emails just so the number looked smaller in the morning. “I know it's crazy,” she says quietly. “But I've never seen you this happy. And I feel…” She trails off, a wistful look settling over her face. “Like you're home.” She nods. And I know at that moment that we are about to do something crazy. Again. Zoe Tate Zoe Tate is an Australian writer and poet. Inspired by travel, nature, and human connection, she writes stories about finding home in unexpected places. She is currently working on her first novel. ** Lake Keitele A lake in Finland. Dancing clouds in a blue sky like Matisse’s paper dancers. Reflections bend clouds long on the water. Crisscrossing currents slice cloud and mountain reflections. No mirror here. Crisscrosses tell an epic tale. An island is a mere tuft in the middle, undisturbed by the epic. The dancers might be snow on peaks so high they become part of the sky. Snow or cloud, either way, they lounge across the lake that refuses to reliably reflect them. But the focus is the lake, the current, the story is in that reflection. When we’re told an epic tale we are forced to reflect on ourselves, our crisscrossing paths in life. What clouds or dancers drifted into our world? The crisscross currents are not natural. No wind is that linear or neat. There are serene waves nearby, but not in the crisscross. There is no ripple in the crisscrosses and they don’t reflect. They interrupt reflection. Judy Aks Judy Aks grew up in NY and now lives and writes in Seattle. Her muses include family, nature, politics, and everyday life. An educator for most of her life, Judy loves to teach and learn through poetry. Her poems have appeared in Eunoia Review. ** Breath Dark island anchored, The sky lays down in white bands. Lake breathes in the light. Elanur Eroglu Williams Elanur Eroglu Williams writes from Istanbul, Türkiye. ** Island The clouds bathed in still water while I rubbed coarse sand between two fingertips, smelled suntan lotion of a girl in pigtails and pink. I fix my eyes on a point on the island where i can feel cool in the dark green, safe. The moment had finally come where I could tell you. Christina Siemering ** Lamentations Mother. Your voice sounds its warning: all is not right with you. The air, still thin, makes skin brittle in places that used to be smooth like ice as it melts in mid winter sun. Thin sheets on the water mimic the shape of trees, naked in their hibernation. They will not fully leaf when the earth turns to spring and the receding water flaunts its mockery. Dramatic rage blinds the ignorant and deafens the greedy. Perhaps it is time, Shekhina, for your deceptive beauty, for your hand to reach out across the heavens and sweep away the detritus of humanity like in days of old. Kaila Schwartz Kaila Schwartz runs an award-winning high school theatre program in the San Francisco Bay Area where she lives with her spouse and kitty overlords. She loves ekphrastic writing and can often be seen in museums scribbling away in notebooks. ** Oh Sherwin, Oh Williams, I Don’t Want to Cover The Earth, I just want a blue bedroom. How can I choose between ANCHORS AWEIGH-- a dark, rich navy blue with deep charcoal undertones for a moody vibe-- because yeah, I’m a moody gal; or HALE NAVY-- a historically sound deep blue balanced with sophisticated gray tones-- because, yeah, I want to be deep & reliable; or SALTY DOG-- a bright, true nautical navy for my “Hey Sailor” nights? Your mid-tones compel me to admit that my bed’s seen more than its share of DENIM as I’ve spread-eagled and struggled to zip up new blue jeans. Let’s talk about STORM CLOUD: You call it a neutral, I say this blue-gray leans into lightning bolts and thunderclaps, what’s neutral about a tornado watch? And WATERLOO? Who. named. this. With its scent of failure, its sad, slight green undertones and notes of exile to Elba? Let’s tap those middling paint cans closed and lean toward the light toward UPWARD’s breezy sky blue mixed with silver-gray undertones, toward RAINWASHED’s spa-like blue influenced by soft green undertones. Let’s relax even more with TRADEWIND’s light, coastal, uncomplicated blue. Finally, I choose you, STARDEW: for you mute the blue and calm my thoughts, and lead me over silvery wakes into a dreamless sleep. Skyler Lovelace Skyler Lovelace is a Wichita visual artist and writer exploring how landscape, memory, and architecture intersect. Working from her light-filled studio inside a historic 1924 elementary school, she creates acrylic landscapes inspired by the transformative rhythms of the Flint Hills, alongside expressive cityscapes celebrating the unique lines of Wichita architecture. Deeply rooted in community creativity, Lovelace also hosts an experimental Art Club and facilitates the Principal Writers poetry collective using the supportive Amherst Writers & Artists method. Learn more at www.skylerlovelace.com ** Nevertheless, Love Me I watched her skate; across the lake, gently breathing in cool blue air. Risk in her wake; he worries for me, until I am back with him. She brushed my arm; a tender touch, after waltzing on flat water. Her grip is firm; my fingers are snug, in white gloves holding him close. Naturally; about me, nothing, is seen as artificial. Yet like Foucault; he makes himself, a work of art, arms around me. Nevertheless; I am the wind, you can love me, but keep me not. Chris Wilmott After a business career in computer technology, Chris Wilmott’s BA and MA concerned fine and applied art. His art practice explores anxiety, with reference to Münch. As well as to climate, AI and artificial wombs. These are matters about which Münch had no concerns. Chris’s original ekphrastic writing reinterprets his painting as well as the paintings of others; in reverse-ekphrasis, his paintings reinterpret into oil, his poems made of words. ** echoes water mirrors sky, becomes the between color rearranges form, translates into light surfaces shimmer, reveal what is essential time grows still inside each breath when asked to explain, say yes Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Feral, Pure Haiku, Collaborature, The Chaos Section Poetry Project, and The Ekphrastic Review, and published in The Anthropocene Hymnal, and The Polaris Trilogy. Follow her explorations at https://kblog.blog/. ** What the Summer Light Wrote The summer storm drove us, marked by zig-zag gusts of wind, beneath these half-lit vaults. Will wisdom be spilled if paradise speaks in truths we read in the lake's waters? In the scroll of strokes letters shaped like seraphim are written in flames. You ask the questions in the grammar of piety but no time for answers. I woke up from dreams listening with my taut skin to all that is unsaid. When the stars came close we gathered them up like fruit spilled across the lake. What words had meant were like a forest on a dark shore silhouetted against the sky. Where is that first word spread into infinity and released by sound? Sounding like lightning the word that opened up graves lives again to speak. Before we awake and remember being born each of us are infants Morning came from night when you breathed your breath in me life felt like fire In dreams I saw this -- a feather ladder raised up reaches the summer's light Here on hallowed ground pilgrims cry aloud like me: Save us, Spare us. See us. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet whose DNA indicates Finnish roots. He lives in a quiet village near a nature conservancy and enjoys reading poetry in translation. ** Winter on Lake Keitele My boat is moored, tied by a thick dun-coloured rope to the jetty next to my father’s house. I am pulling on my waders, ancient dull yellow trousers strengthened with patches at the knees and repaired with patches on the arse. I am tying them around my waist, the frayed leather belt on its last hole. I pull the boat towards me by the rope. The damp wooden ribs, holding the taut cross-planks, shine briefly in the watery sun. I grasp the prow and step onboard, swinging myself round onto the seat. This is the first day this winter that the ice has broken enough to take the boat onto the lake. The first day since I came home to look after Papa. In October my mother left after 40 years. Her sister in Turku has cancer. She needs care. We all know mother isn’t coming back. Papa clings to the hope but even he, in the dark hours, knows she will never return. She is as absent as if she were dead. He didn’t care for her or their love. He has been a cantankerous man from my earliest memory. Grumbling, complaining. Arguing when things didn’t go his way, pushing Mother into line, insisting she agree with him, expecting loyalty of word and deed. My brothers and I encouraged her to resist, to rebel, but she shrugged and stayed. We drifted away. Like flotsam and jetsam we bobbed on the waves, gradually finding ourselves way out at sea, not knowing how but understanding why - too many bridges needed to get back, too much pain to resist, too much shame to carry. My father doesn’t want me here. I can’t cook like her. I can’t keep house like her. We both know I don’t want to be here. Like her. The ice has stayed longer than usual. Through the winter months I caught fish through ice holes and cooked them on the stove, sizzling and steaming in our small kitchen. In early December, as I cleaned and gutted a small pike at the kitchen sink, Papa complained that I caught very few fish to show for the hours I spent on the ice. I told him he should talk to the fish about it, not me. He stood up, his hands fisted as he push down on the table, his face the colour of rough red wine. “Don’t talk to me like that in my own house,” he roared. “Your brothers would never talk to me like that.” “My brothers aren’t here having to put up with you day and night. They have lives.” He lunged at me, no doubt to hit me as he did when I was a child, but he is stooped now and his shoulders have lost their strength, stiffened and frozen from a life of labour and long, cold winters. I left the fish in the sink and went out into the yard, leaving him to find his own way back to his chair. This was his father’s farm. It is small, too small to support a family. There are always buildings to patch, animals to feed, fields to be ploughed. My father filled the gaps at our table with rabbits shot in the fields, chickens that survived the fox, and of course, fish. I have spent the winter filling the gaps. Christmas passed without decorations or presents. There was no card from Mother. No call to let us know how she is or wish us Happy Christmas. On Epiphany a neighbour brought half a Christmas cake, not needed in her house. He didn’t invite her in, our only visitor of the festive season. “I’m sure it’s not as good as Usva’s but I know you were always fond of cake, Tapio.” Reluctantly, he grunted a thank you and shut the door. Chopping wood behind the woodshed, I saw her pause and consider knocking again then put her hand down and retreat across the yard to the road. I raised my arm to call her back and thank her properly but, like her, I let it fall. In late January he started looking for his gun. A rifle he uses to keep the deer at bay with warning shots. I hid it and the bullets. He called me all manner of names when he couldn’t find it. It was weeks before he believed that Mother must have it in Turku. Now in early March I have weathered winter with him. I have taken his rudeness, his complaining, his criticism. I have ignored him ignoring me. I have worked all day to feed and care for him. Today I am going to the island. Behind it the perch and pike hide in the lake’s deep deep water. I have the gun beneath the tarpaulin. I have two bullets in my breast pocket. The oar locks, bracing the oars, clink with every stroke. My hands are cold but I have my rhythm now. The boat glides smoothly through the near-freezing water. I leave the shore behind, the jetty becoming a collection of painted matchsticks, the house hidden within the conifers, closing around it as I row. My toes inside the waders squeeze the rocks, feeling the roughness through my socks. I steer the boat, navigating the currents my father taught me. About a kilometer past the island I pull in the oars and lift the tarpaulin. The mist is beautiful, sliced by the sun into ribbons. A cat’s cradle for unwary men to get snared in. A maze to navigate, like life. I watch the changing patterns, the paths that open up as the ribbons slacken and disappear. I breathe for the first time since I returned. I undo my belt, roll the waders down, take out the rocks and throw them over the side, waiting for a sound that never comes. Finally, I let the gun drop, swirling down into the depths. The mist is clearing. I turn the boat and head back to shore. Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland. She writes short stories mainly and occasionally flirts with poetry. She explores themes of belonging, fractured memory and secrets, sometimes with humour and sometimes with danger. She is currently trying out a variety of genres for fun. She enjoys writing with and learning from others in workshops. ** Still In the still morn, cacophony shatters held breath, silence flinching, fleeing through the evergreens sparkling with dew. Sunlight slants through the trees, a prism through the limbs, branches, needles to dapple patterns across the placid pond. Robin White Robin is a lifelong creative: poet, writer, painter, collagist, and mixed media artist. She was born and raised in a small gown in Georgia, USA and can drive on a wet red clay road without going in the ditch. She loves music from gospel to hair metal. Going thrifting and antiquing followed by good food and good company is a perfect day. Her dream is to live on the beach at her favorite place in the world, Jekyll Island, GA. ** The Norway Spruce and the Sun I have once again mistaken the intensity of your noontime gaze for warmth of a different kind. I too quickly forget that to absorb your radiance when your power is at its peak is to shrink my own shadow. But I do not shrivel when you turn away from me. I see my true stature in the lake’s surface only when you are in retreat. Laura Nagle Laura Nagle’s flash fiction and poetry have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Sunlight Press, HAD, Trash Cat Lit, and the Irish-language journal Aneas. Her translations from French and Spanish include Prosper Mérimée’s 1827 hoax, Songs for the Gusle, and Adela Zamudio’s 1913 feminist novel, Confidences. ** Confluence I’ll take this moment to wish you a wide open sky with clouds like giant gulls waving in celebration. May spruce and pine mountain embellish your horizon, pied wagtail, arctic tern and Spirit wind hail your days and may bumper stocks of pike and zander rise in lakes wherever you throw your nets. May you see shadow, light, flecked moods and reflections in each other’s face, but want to be nowhere else. May you remember going down into crystalline waters and emerging bathed clean by holy love, companioned and propelled into depths then whispered on to shores of need. May quietude flow from your convergence like a magnet and a million superlatives fill your lips daily for each gesture, because gales will blast, orbits will change and you’re painting the start of a masterpiece. May you identify poisonous algae, woodworm, rust, as well as the wonderland in each day and as you launch, may sea-shanty, psalm, trumpet and pipe herald the way for others to track and navigate. Helen Freeman Helen lives in Edinburgh but loves to travel and wrote this poem in response to this painting for her niece’s wedding in Finland - on the end of a jetty, in front of a scene just like this. ** The Way Back Swainson’s Thrush were missing, spirals of rising notes out of hearing before return to groves they knew across the field, summer timeshare, nursery, family seat. April nights going back, remember, steady stroke, stroke, past starlit brothers strutting arm-in-arm, fish swimming well south of bear. Early fog thins to mist on the lake nursing green springs. Cold recharge thirsty subsoil sips, percolates through earth and rock faults on its way to streams and river. Morning clouds arm in arm in a jig along the ridge-line, cross to open land in darkening columns weighing down my brief toehold to ground. Incidental action figure, I look anywhere but there. Pines stretch toward aspen limbs, arched the way we reached across the bed, what won’t be seen or heard again but for winding song, from this moment just gone, and to this, just passed, just now, flown beyond compare to time or how far. Lynn Axelrod Lynn Axelrod’s poetry has appeared, or is about to, in print journals and online in the U.S., England, and Ireland, such as Marin Poetry Center Anthology (annual), Orchards Poetry Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, and The Ekphrastic Review; is in University College Dublin’s James Joyce Library Special Collections; was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle; and selected as a broadside display for an exhibit on monarch butterflies. ** Birthmarks Perhaps they were blue gray or bluish-gray my newborn back served as a canvas displayed the brushstrokes of DNA. In shades of stormy skies my congenital dermal melanocytosis appeared as cloudlike shapes reflected a distinct mix of Finnish Swedish and Siberian roots. Unaware of our blend of genetics my mother asked the doctor about my bruiselike patches– All Asian babies have this. But she’s not Asian. Oh, yes, she is. From both sides family stories offered potential the promise of insight until improved science revealed new light mapped a realistic landscape one bathed in maternal origins. Between the zigzags of uncertainty mirrors of clarity traveled the coastlines of northern Scandinavia illuminated the taiga and tundra of the Kola Peninsula and confirmed my grandfather’s indigenous ancestry. Oh, yes, she is Sámi. Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is the daughter of a Swedish immigrant mother and the author of nine books, including On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing (Kelsay Books, 2025). She writes poetry and prose influenced by memory, the human experience, and the natural world. An award-winning artist and poet as well as an Eric Hoffer and a multiple Best of the Net award nominee, she holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Arts degree. From 2018 – 2026, she served as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. She finds joy spending time outdoors and with loved ones. ** Night Swim Do you remember me jumping in the lake after seeing you with her at the school dance, how the white dress I imagined wearing to our wedding ballooned like a lily around me, my fingers brushing the surface, stirring constellations in the sky’s reflection, hair slithering around me, as if ink bled from love notes you slipped me during class, where I sank to a wet purgatory to mourn the life I’d never have, and in the darkness, I wanted to die, but hope kissed me and I emerged gasping? Neither did I— until I recognized your face in the grocery line, but stopped myself from speaking when I realized I’d forgotten your name. Amanda Rivard Amanda Rivard enjoys writing. Her stories have appeared in a variety of publications including 50-Word Stories and 101 Words. ** Lake Keitele broad flat lines zigzagging over a lake that reflects white clouds -- wind and currents, or the wake of an invisible boat? a dark wooded island surrounded by bright blue water -- I think of my late wife standing with me on the shore, saying the trees look lonely I used to believe that the souls of lost loved ones stayed by the far hills -- but now I think they are here, serene, where wavelets gleam Gregroy E. Lucas Gregory E. Lucas lives in Hilton Head, South Carolina. His poems and short stories have appeared in Blueline, Sunflower Tanka, Sparks of Calliope, and elsewhere. Follow him on X @GregoryELucas. ** Salute Beneath a somber summer sun, we gathered at Charlie’s Island. Held hands in a sacred circle. Breathed in the pine. Listened to the lake weep. A perfect send off since this was Charlie’s favorite retreat. Nora spoke first, sharing Charlie’s love of fishing. Caroline shivered and sang a sweet lullaby. Then Connor spoke. We all gazed at his unlined face, the youngest of us all. He looked unfazed, and eloquently quipped about how his father always put his family first. The only lie spoken. silver ribbons swirl journey beyond, seeking eternal love Barbara Edler Barbara Edler lives along the banks of the Mississippi River in southeast Iowa where she writes to heal. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently in the July issue of Moss Piglet. Her haibun "Salute" is in response to unresolved emotions one often encounters after losing a parent, lover, friend, or child. ** Blue Wind, whip our heroes through current blue in wide grosgrain ribbons water blue. Let those streamers scream and pronounce At last Finland is free! White and blue! Let distinctive Suomi sounds flounce, in Kalevala rune ancient blue. Ilmatar carries each fluid ounce. Son Väinämöinen digs, plants trees blue. Let his zither play tune, renounce the strangers, take back Lake, icy blue. And I, sing heroes with paint, denounce Russian vodka, toss to yonder blue. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet who looks forward to traveling Europe again where she saw the bluest water ever in Austria. Her recent publications include Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press), The Night Watch (Kelsay Books), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (dancing girl press), The Wanderers (Shanti Arts), and the forthcoming Memory Collector (Kelsay Books) and The Appropriation of Brueghel (Shanti Arts). She serves as host of The Ekphrastic Book Club for The Ekphrastic Review. ** Sanctuary on Lake Keitele I come here in a dream, invisible, to escape the chaos of my world. Peace settles over the glassy lake like an icy mist. The cold air clears my thoughts, freezes my fear of the future. It engages my senses like a sharp mental reset. In the distance, I see a dense, coniferous forest. Its dark silhouette stands like a sentinel guarding the shoreline, their reflection unbroken, except for the ripples that drift across the lake like lines from an ancient story. I struggle to decipher their message, but the language is foreign, full of unfamiliar expressions, belonging to another time. Perhaps they tell tales of ghosts of ancient dwellers in search of a sanctuary for their weary souls. My eyes settle on the solitary island. Still in my dream, I see a weathered cabin through the trees where an old woman lives. She traded profound sorrow for the solace of solitude. In search of peace and contentment, she wanders the rocky shores. In the depths of her grief, she exchanged misery for birdsong and the company of trees. I want to call out to her, tell her she’s no longer alone. She lifts her head, steadies her gaze on the lake’s glassy surface. Her reflection is me! Barbara Ann Abbott Barbara Ann Abbott is a poet and flash fiction writer who discovered her passion for writing late in life. She draws inspiration from memoir, art, nature, profound loss, quiet moments of everyday life, and the complexities of human connection. Her work has appeared in more than fifteen literary anthologies and online journals, including The Ekphrastic Review and California Writers Club publications. She is currently planning her first collection of poetry and prose. Barbara lives in Northern California's wine country with her husband, Bob.
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 Carnival in Madureira, by Tarsila do Amaral (Brazil) 1924 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 Carnival in Madureira, by Tarsila do Amaral. Deadline is July 17, 2026. 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. Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD). 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 do Amaral 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 17, 2026. 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. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 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. |
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