 Vision of the Last Days, by Hildegard von Bingen (Germany) before 1179 Hildegard’s Vision, 12th C. Most disturbing of this visionary’s mimesis are the animals with their tongues licking a sticky, slimy plant, sprung perhaps from a darkly ocean deep. The similar plant, fingerlike appears again in the lower right, tentacled and shedding a frightening and toothy guise. The lady figure blesses them all-- blesses the frightful face, blesses the four figures looking up curious but unafraid. Von Bingen has travelled her mystic path; her way is bumpy, her house non-plussed. She has arrived at the acme sharing her viriditas and cosmic vision while singing and blessing us. Carole Mertz Carole Mertz, interviewer, poet, and essayist, has recent work at Abandoned Mine, Adanna 2022 print journal, Dreamer’s Creative Writing, and River Teeth. Her meta poem “Invited to Linger” was a finalist in the Ars Poetica 2022 Contest at Riddled with Arrows. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Carole is preparing an essay on poet Robert Miltner’s use of the caesura. Carole is Editorial Assistant with Kalisto Gaia Press. ** Visions of Light Abbess in solitude, Mother Superior, your poems transform mere words—prophetic lyrics wrapped around musical notes—quaint compositions denoting devotion, pervading the few yet desired by multitudes seeking holy sights & hallowed cathedrals to exalt liturgy-- echoing resplendent plainchant, curbing cardinal temptation. Magistra Hildegard, High Middle Age philosopher dancing among shadows in a stone floor abbey, I study you full of awe & admiration; Benedictine simplicity embraces natural history rooted in science, theology compatible alternative medicine, holistic wellness relished by recipients of your herbal remedies & mystic prayers. Sibyl of the Rhine, I listen to your sacred monophony channel cosmic laws, know you supervised Scivias artisans crafting miniature illuminations stamping mandela paintings with gestalt immediacy, feverishly kept experience— watching & being seen by a deity; now, bless my imagination, let prescient mysteries inform lingering questions, baptize any doubt. Saintly scribe, share visions of five peaks, ebon ropes, tethered beasts facing west: sans grace, a fiery dog burns, yellow lion urges war, pale & horse snubs good works; meantime, black pig misery & muddy impurity touch grey wolf shoulders—dividing, conquering, plundering—son of perdition’s wicked jowls snapping above heads, rending & seducing while you chastise deception Von Bingen, I hear you; I know you; I admire your awareness-- spiritually grounded "reflection of the living Light”—your open hands beckon, etch The Last Days & the Fall of the Antichrist in my mind like a gilded rendering, divine revelations preserved for millennia as you champion redemption & guide salvation each epoch’s deliverance bathed in righteous blood & compassion. Sterling Warner An award-winning Washington-based author, poet, and educator, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared literary magazines, journals, and anthologies including Down in the Dirt, Shot Glass Journal, Danse Macabre, Ekphrastic Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner’s collections of poetry include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, and Flytraps: Poems (2022)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Currently, Warner writes, participates in “virtual” poetry readings, and enjoys retirement in Washington. ** Reversals The clouds spend their words on prophecy. The knob-nosed ogre with fine-tuned foam Across its forehead converses with the Lovely With hair ribboned by the wind-- Silhouette of air and mist. An angel hovers overhead in a slurry of sparrows Gray in the rose setting of the sun Passing the moon on its rising. Vision of the end of days. A revision: black to white White to black in a negative snapshot With a snap of fingers strumming the twines of vines. Disembodied hands, gnawed by creatures With dentilated smiles, reach for the skies In the midst of transforming woman Into man in the lap of loins. In ascent to the castle, fortunes amassed Descend in the ridding of greeded goods. And the beasts surpass man to become the pinnacles Of being, assuming their rightful place on the land, Devouring a feast of grazing. The world will not end, simply reverse its spin. The end of days is the final vision-- With the loss of pattern And the absence of art in our imagination. Cynthia Dorfman Cynthia Dorfman has practiced ekphrastic writing as a frequent participant in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery writing program. She has been a writer, editor, publications director and communications manager in the public and private sectors. Her creative work has appeared on line and in print with the most recent, a short story in The Library Love Letter. In the summers she lives in an old shoe factory in Wisconsin, USA. ** That Light Though Faint At first in child, then forty years, bedimmed a Light illumined fears that death would be to soul unchaste forever discontent of waste thus laid to promise given those of peace eternal in repose awaiting promised honor paid for purity of course they stayed and vision they by skill enshrined in word, and song, and art refined as testaments so well distilled that argued conduct being willed by glimmer of that Light though faint begetting glow of cherished saint. Portly Bard Old man. Ekphrastic fan. 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. ** Which Beast, Then Which beast, then, Will find me last-- My mouth open, holding for an August raspberry, stuffed instead by November’s creeping wolf-- blackmatted fur, thrusting hot, smelling of bitumen and rotting onions Or thornedcane spirals, split lizard tongues wrapped around my fingers that minutes ago lifted new eggs from nesting boxes Or shaggyslack jaw, redeye, leering teeth groinhung, panting soul clamped tight to my blank-eyed angel who still holds to heaven, not knowing how, or when. Denise Wilbur Denise Wilbur is a lifelong educator who has recently left the world of schools, claiming that time and open space to write. ** Hildegard’s World: The Secret of the Rose Window Precious Hildegard, when you entered this world, A magic millennium was also being born. Greece’s glory had faded. Centuries of thinkers disappeared after explaining Beauty, truth, logic, rhetoric, and the different kinds of love. The Romans were gone too, leaving their solid bridges, aqueducts And the old church in Bamberg behind, Along with their stodgy marble gods, resembling no one but themselves. Your world, Hildegard, was filled with upward-flowing light, With angels everywhere, soaring on deep lapis blue wings, their haloes aglow, Through the realm of dreams, visions, miracles, symbols and saints. Demons, dragons, beasts, serpents, and wolves inhabited this same Stratosphere, along with the secret sounds germinating in the Black Forest Where the elves and the fairies lived. And all were real, as real as bridges, As authentic as thoughts. But the greatest beings in your world Were Mary, emerged from the shadows, now wrapped in her blue mantle, Ruling the sky and the sea and sitting beside Her shining, golden Son. Hildegard, you belonged in this new reality, You and your music, your Responsories, played on the psaltery at mass, Your fragrant garden, filled with blue rosemary and healing, greening herbs. You lived in this swirling circle of color, where the chant of Women’s voices lifted like bells, linked together in a dancing daisy chain Of yellow light, pink and crimson light, claiming dawn and dusk, The green light of fragrant mountain pines and summer chestnut leaves. Your world was Mary’s world, the place where stones were transformed Into towers, into spires that aspired to reach the circle Where the cloud of witnesses surrounded the very throne of God. Under the towers, the turrets and the spires of these new temples of sacred stone, The rose windows, built in your lifetime, carried light from the farthest star Into the darkest crypt, casting the demons into obscurity. The vision you left to help us see the Last Days as you perceived them Is as symmetrical as the thoughts that created the Greek temples and the Roman roads. Surrounded by swirls of golden light with eighteen roses linked in a tall rectangle, You saw two rooms above, one room below, tightly confined, chaos and order at war. One upper room is filled with beasts. In the adjoining room, She sits in the high tower, bathed in golden light, her arms lifted in prayer. In the room below, He, crowned with gold, also reaches up, sharing his space With demons and fire. His feet lift from the floor; his face is unafraid. Both of these Holy Ones know the Rose Windows’ secret: No matter how much space The demons occupy, no darkness can overcome a Rose Window’s light. Rose Anna Higashi Rose Anna Higashi taught Japanese Literature, English Literature, Poetry and Creative Writing at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose, California, for thirty-five years. Upon retirement, she was commissioned by the Catholic Bishop of San Jose to serve as a Lay Ecclesial Minister. She held this position for nine years as Director of Adult Religious Education at St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Los Gatos. She now lives in the ancient Hawaiian village of Kaaawa in rural Oahu with her husband, Wayne Higashi. They hope to celebrate their sixtieth anniversary in 2023. Rose Anna’s poetry journal, Blue Wings, was published by Paulist Press, and many of her lyric poems and haiku can be viewed on her website, myteaplanner.com, co-written with her niece, Kathleen Pedulla. This website also contains Rose Anna’s monthly blog, “Tea and Travels.” Her poems and essays have also appeared in a variety of other publications, including The Avocet, The California Quarterly, Caesura, Poets Online, Agape Review, The Catholic Poetry Room on the Integrated Catholic Life website, and the college English textbooks, Visions Across the Americas and Thresholds. ** What to Bring to the Last Days Bring operatic visions of chain-tongued lions, lizards, and wolverines who shore up the dying tree. Bring music from the firmament whose toothy stars exude a green river before the vagabond choir. Bring the reclamation of toppled bridges and the gestures of scholastic saviors as yet unborn. Bring blood pooling in your extremities as you straddle evil with no bone left unturned. Lisa Vihos The poems of Lisa Vihos have appeared in many poetry journals, both print and online. She has published four chapbooks, and has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and numerous awards from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. She is a founding editor of Stoneboat Literary Journal and the Sheboygan organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change. In 2020, she was named the first poet laureate of Sheboyganwhere she hosts the podcast Poetry on Air for Mead Public Library. Her first novel, The Lone Snake: The Story of Sofonisba Anguissola, was released in May, 2022 from Water’s Edge Press. ** Reflections of the Living Light "For people rise and set like the sun..." Hildegard von Bingen, Vision Xl "I've got the world on a string, sittin' on a rainbow, Got the string around my finger ..." as performed by Frank Sinatra (songwriters Harold Arlen / Ted Koehler) Nature guided her. The soul in the body was like sap rising in a tree. During an Animal Guide meditation she had seen a bristling boar, looking just as he had on the banner fluttering in the wind over King Arthur's ship, the Prydwen, as it sailed into the underworld to capture the Hallows of Britain. It must have been the winter solstice sun rising over the water on the east coast of Ireland at Newgrange because snow had fallen like chalk dust on the back of the boar before she realized he was only a javelina she'd seen on a family trip to south Texas. But the dreamlike meditation continued, and she wondered if the pig was in danger when a golden lion sprang from a medieval picture, Vision of The Last Days created by Hildegard von Bingen, her stylized lion squeezed into a window-box in the drawing with the pig, a pale stallion, a fiery dog and a white wolf all 5 animals attached by strings to 5 mountain tops that resemble branches of quaint medieval vegetation. At the base of a monster-like botanical Antichrist (SE of the 5 animals who lived in the North) the 4 Evangelists wonder what else will change in the last days of their world. John had been an Eagle, Luke, a Cow; Mark had been the Lion; and Matthew, originally a serpent like some ancient Beelzebub had been transformed to an Angel with the advent of Christianity. Like a breeze in their ears, they could hear God's voice in the trees; His promise in the healer's hands -- the hands of Hildegard von Bingen -- a woman who worked with tinctures, herbs and precious stones; who knew blood-letting -- the fluid red as liquid fire -- had the power of the bloodstone and should only be done when the moon was full, when the voice of living light guided her hands as it had done since she was 8 -- 2. The light which I see...is not spatial; but it is far , far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it ' the reflection of the living Light.' And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues and certain human actions take form for me and gleam. Hildegard von Bingen The animals are guiding me backward. Together, we cross time in my mother's story -- and I am falling from the mountaintop of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. A book with a red and gold spine falls open to the Crusades -- a page where King Richard the Lionheart is returning to save England; and alone, my mother prays to God to save me, unconscious. There are no bargains, but she strikes a bargain holding me up like an offering, bartering to give me a Father. And what marketplace is this, where a boy pulls a sword, Caliburn, from a stone and becomes the True King because he is pure of heart? & why did God, like a judge, hear my mother, and wake me, gentle as a dove's wing feathers folded in the shape of a living harp, the music in its strings leaving marks, a staff (thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me) in an illumination -- A Vision of The Last Days where a crowned figure rises -- body suspended, as on a cross, while Hildegard von Bingen watches from a broken tower, its stones shaped like the teeth of an open zipper in a space she has imagined, a purgatory where sins are absolved and I will live to be 7 -- a year younger than the visionary artist when I began to see God's golden rings -- circles pointing out what a Father wants to show his daughter. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. Her psychic energy is low in these troubled days in the 21st century, a shadowed time in history; but the golden rings of light are true to her life story. The first she remembers appeared around a rock, broken open to a clear crystal centre on the school playground in Austin, Texas, circa 1952. The painting can be read differently, of course. It could represent the first and second coming, the spirit of Christ the King rising as Jesus of Nazareth watches from a broken tower, two fingers raised in blessing at the top of the painting, from that place where the sun rises in the east. ** Without Your Faith I have no way to understand my visions, that come and come like an avalanche, unstoppable, bright as the sun on new snow, heavy as stone, sharp enough to cut, like knives of ice. You saw hope, old promises, something you could trust, forgiveness enough for rescue from the beasts of the apocalypse. But I can not bend, curtsey or genuflect, see only the sly monster beneath those holy robes, choke on the scent and smoke of burning bodies, the ash silting up the streets of paradise. You heard the stars singing, their arms uplifted, their faces lit, like the moon, with a reflected glory. I hear only silence, beneath the faint electric hum of dust, sand blowing in the desert wind. Without your faith I am cold, comfortless, stubborn and dense as stone, alone even in this great congregation, pilgrims on the road to some New Jerusalem, a golden city only they can see. And yet I cannot look away, unsee these strange figures, a splendor spread across the sky. I have no names for them, no explanation, but there they are, alive, a pantheon of miracles, a gift or punishment, a shining regiment of gods and angels, waiting for me, ready for the promised armageddon. Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy has always been in love with words. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Third Wednesday, Earth's Daughters and Gyroscope. She has been a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. ** Sights and Sounds of St. Hildegard’s Vision of the Last Days St. Hildegard enlightens millennia with a medieval arcana of visionary images, foretelling the apocalypse. To embrace her we relearn a symbolic language. The three panels of the miniature painting “Last Days” weave together her revelation of struggle between darkness of sharp toothed evil and salvation. Her powerful, wordless narrative flows from scene to scene. A lexicon of medieval symbols offers a surfeit of wretchedness, corruption of humanity and nature, wonders of redemption, faith, truth, and durance of the Divine City. We decipher and recipher the epic story; revise her eloquent twelfth century imagery to the verbal semaphore of our language. In a postmodern mode, her story evolves with past present future blended. In abbreviated history, five wild beasts enwrap the past with ghastly long tongues. A fiendish antichrist emerges from the womb of the golden mother, grows large and menacing on a mountain top. Virtue confronts the excremental demon with a fulgent burst of heavenly lightning. The monstrous, spidery creature is destroyed. We are terrified, huddled together the midst of Armageddon. St. Hildegard’s “End of Days” is an elaborate graphic design, a vivid compressed chronicle of portent and dangers of secular life and hope for future salvation. But there is so much more: look and listen… She accepts no sonic or graphic boundaries in her expression of the cosmic, eternal divine. The visual and aural imagery are creations unrestricted by form or formula. While viewing St. Hildegard’s exotic miniatures, her spiritually profound, unique music pulses in our hearts and expands imagination. St. Hildegard’s eloquent, monophonic music resonates. Plangent threnody and elegant, graceful chant enhance and illuminate her mystical icons. In the “Last Days” vision an agile melisma throbs in ecstasy. Her beautiful chants are filled with love and sing of harmonious, ageless perfection. St. Hildegard’s many manuscript visions and musical offerings open insights into her era and our own time. They dispel moral confusion, enlighten turgid politics, subdue the lethargy of timorous thoughts and reduce the carnage of daily violence. In our millennium, her music and visual reflections offer amity and inner peace. Ben Sackmary Ben Sackmary is a lifelong writer of mostly poetry. Now retired after decades of college teaching (not literature), he has the time to devote to poetry that the art form deserves. He has no career interest in poetry and writes mainly for himself and friends. ** The Stubborn Pursuit of Pleasure with My Unvaccinated Lover My nightmare—fiery dog, pale horse, and a grey wolf licking their last licks on a sprawling trunk at dusk. Terror begins when they see my naked, thin figure, a body Giacometti might have bronze-casted for a promised-green turf. Life’s lost tongue. The vagabond face between the robed spirit’s legs masks a warning. I want a breath to find my clothes. Rope tugs from the mouth, oh that animal-stupid want! John Milkereit John Milkereit resides in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press. ** Doctor of the Church It was during the High Middle Ages. Women were the keepers of the house, the carers of families, the obedient wives of husbands. Hildegard von Bingen knew that, if she wanted to use her intellect and her talents as a woman, there was only one place: a convent. And she thrived. Polymath, composer, mystic, visionary, writer… Mother Superior, founder of natural history, purveyor of ecstasy. Hildegard von Bingen, the most accomplished of scientific women, lived for the reflection of the ‘living light’, the God who had clearly endowed her with a superior brain, music and rapture. She was never officially canonized, even though Saint Hildegard has been part of Church lore for centuries. The holiness of her life was never in doubt. When they made her ‘Doctor of the Church’, her intellectual achievements were finally recognized. Would that female scientists, composers, teachers today were thus enabled and elevated. Songs of ecstasy Correspondence with kings Fulfillment Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as six poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? has been published by Kelsay Books in July 2022. Also on Amazon the very latest: Whistling in the Dark, published by Taj Mahal Publishing House in August 2022. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Vision of the Last Days We tied the beasts by their tongues in the upper chamber, hoping to keep them quiet. The dogs couldn’t bolt when the demon arrived, but they did gag out tiny barking noises. The unicorn, outraged, stamped on the head of the nearest dog. He reared back, pulling on his tongue, trying to tear himself free and get at the other dogs. Bright red blood gushed from his mouth. Hildegard was oblivious to all the commotion. She had considered her work finished earlier and retired after lunch to the attic. There she dawdled with her doll castle and listened to her transistor radio. That, of course, left only me to deal with the devil’s disciple, who snarled at me, his face black with rage, his clawed hands clinching rhythmically at the air. As my subjects cowered near the edge of the great hall, my mind emptied, blank with fear. I had absolutely no idea what to do. But somehow, I began to sway in time with the angry motion of the demon’s hands. This must have startled him, for he abruptly stopped and looked at me intently. I stood very still. We stared at each other for an awful, awkward moment. It really did seem like an eternity. Then I did a little barefoot shuffle, some automatic, unconscious dance step dredged from childhood classes. I lifted my arms and spread my voluminous golden sleeves in a gentle, languorous arc. I smiled. “Do you like my codpiece?” I asked. Barry Basden Barry Basden lives in the Texas hill country with his wife and Bean, their little rescue terrier. ** The Mystery of Umbra Viventis Lucis Are we doomed to troll through Wikipedia or other google sites for enlightenment? Would that we could summon Hildegard herself to explain the grotesque figures drawn with hints of a childish hand: monsters and cowering little people and the levitating king-figure with a face in his crotch. And what of the strange animals with their long, notched tongues licking what could be slender fingers or just as easily the tentacles of an octopus, and the man/woman who appears to be teetering on razor blades? (no wonder he/she’s got their fingers crossed). Between you and me, I suspect a learned type or two will want to extol the picture’s depth of meaning without actually having a clue, something they certainly won’t be admitting to any time soon. But Pope Eugenius was impressed and said You go girl!..get that shit out there- or I imagine papal words to that effect - (Hildy: talk about raising your profile in one fell swoop!) Personally, I’d like to speak with Hildegard. And ask about the relationship to god/the universe or whatever spiritual magic she was birthed with maybe as a caul around her. Too bad she died so long ago, farewelled, by all reports, by two streams of light appearing across the skies to cross the room where she lay dying. I believe. Though thousands wouldn’t. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda is a Poet living in Lake Tabourie, NSW Australia. She’s been writing poetry since April 2021, with formal qualifications in Business Management and Personal Training. She is just beginning her Arts Degree in Creative Writing. She has recently been published in three anthologies, on Viewless Wings.com, in The Ekphrastic Review, with a poem forthcoming in the next edition of the Star 82 Review. Linda adores animals, family, and good champagne not necessarily in that order. ** Visions The abbess dipped her brush in the crimson and carefully dabbed in an eye. The monster winked at her. She filled in the other eye. Black pupils bored into hers, and she turned away for a moment to clear the vision. She had been gifted with visions since she was a small child and they called her Hildegard. The name had faded, but she had the visions still. Her fingers itched to continue. Paint us. Give us life. There was more crimson needed for the demon’s tongue. The abbess added three tiny brush strokes. She had been worried that the visions were sinful, but the archbishop had encouraged her to set them down in her books. Not sinful then. But disturbing. Distressing sometimes. She changed brushes. Ochre. The prince’s breeches. The monster’s head was between the prince’s legs. Why did he have a demon in the place of his manly parts? She sighed. An allegory possibly. Men’s urges. Though the times were reasonably calm, even if the English were still fighting one another. They had no king, hadn’t had one for as long as she could remember. And the Pope was calling for another crusade. The abbess looked at the red-eyed monster, black, hair like serpents. Evil, but not a Saracen, she decided. They worshiped one god, not like the Heathens. They were simply fighters. It was their land after all. The men fought and the women prayed. It was the same the world over. She thought for a moment about the Saracen women, praying, cloistered and veiled just as she was. But in their houses, fountains played in colonnaded courtyards, and birds sang in cool shaded gardens. Their husbands and fathers watched the stars and made maps of the heavens. Did their women watch too and wonder with them? She would have done, if she had been able. She hoped her Saracen-sisters did. She had never known her own sisters. Hildegard had been given into God’s service when she was too young to remember, and her occupations had always been those of God’s handmaiden. She had been observed night and day. Protected from evil. Green this time. The Serpent with a woman’s face. The Serpent always had a woman’s face. It was God’s will. She paused, the brush poised above the tiny puddle of verdigris, thinking of a clear desert night, a deep black sky alive with stars, a jackal howling. In a deft movement, the hovering brush dipped instead into the oak gall ink, and the abbess gave the Serpent a neat black beard. Jane Dougherty Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, The Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020. ** Monster Hide-N-Seek There are no monsters hunting me, Not one for me to hear or see, Though it’s said that they are there, No monster limbs are in my hair. I thought I heard a thump one night, I pulled my covers snug and tight, I closed my eyes and sang a song, That sound alone should make them gone. Maybe the monsters could be nice? A friend once voiced her sage advice, I rolled my eyes, patted her hand, It’s sweet how she can’t understand. The monsters do not smile or speak, They do not hide for me to seek, Their life is only as I breathe, The monsters are inside of me. Corrie Pappas Corrie Pappas is a small business owner living outside of Boston. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and she is the author of the children’s book, Come Along and Dream. ** The Colours of Night I hear the children play Stacking stones All the seven ahead of ball Breaking again- I breathe the dead Rising up a precipice Walking past my body Anchored in now. From the rear car window I watch myself Sitting on a broken fence- Hands drooping, one leg folded The other unable to reach the ground. Dark and hollow Spread across the whole, half eaten Like a wall with a peeling paint- I will find the lost in numbers Under the lighted lanterns, As a child where I had envisioned Tall bears hairy and brown Paws up in the air. The inner ghost splits Lightning cuts up the sky Thunder thrusts the eyes shut That never meet another sunrise. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing the most. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru.  Join us on Sunday afternoon for an ekphrastic writing session. Our small group creative writing playgrounds are about connection, community, and conversation, and you'll discover intriguing artworks and leave with ideas and drafts for poetry and small fictions. Workshops are via Zoom, and cost $30 CAD or approx. $24 USD. Click here or on image of angel for more information.
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 Bronze Horse Bit Cheekpiece, Luristan (Iran) c. 700 BCE 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 of 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 Luristan Bronze. Deadline is September 2, 2022. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. If you would like to give more, you can do so here. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 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 LURISTAN CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, September 2, 2022. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. 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.  The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (Spain) 1931 Dear Writers, Dear Readers, This challenge was absolutely brutal on this end. We received an avalanche of entries. Choosing a selection was a terrible task. I always aim to include as many as possible for these challenges, and still lose sleep over what I leave out. Our whole purpose at The Ekphrastic Review is to give space to your words and share diverse ekphrases that come from art. Our challenge section is about showing all the different ideas that one painting or artwork can generate in a variety of writers. And we do that, but choosing is still tough. This time, it was really tough. We had an outpouring of responses. We choose a variety of artworks for these prompts, always curated to provoke your curiosity and set you on a discovery pathway. We aim to tip your writing into unexpected directions and open surprising new doors to art. Once in awhile, we pick one of the “big” paintings of art’s history- The Starry Night, Nighthawks, and now, The Persistence of Memory. These are paintings that have had a major impact on countless people. If much has been said about them, there is still much more they can and will inspire. Dali and his work are fascinating, and this painting resonates in intriguing ways, far and wide, with writers in a unique space to give words to the themes suggested, to philosophize and analyze and dissect. We love seeing entries from new writers and new to us writers. We also love giving a platform to long-time contributors who give so much to this community. I left out so many wonderful entries by favourite regulars and had to make difficult decisions between many new voices. I say this every now and again to remind you: know that your words matter to us. We can’t run even a fraction of submissions we receive even though we publish daily, plus two monthly challenge showcases that are brimming over. Know that we love how inspired you are, the heart you bare, the lantern that you are, illuminating art and our tough world. I hope you enjoy the works selected for Dali’s melting clock painting. Until next time, love, Lorette ** Persistence of Memory  Lena Zycinsky Artist and poet, currently based in Atlanta. More info here: lenazycinsky.com ** Old Moments That tick-tock your heart, your head, that aren’t as dead as you thought. One of those moments, a first date, perhaps, is draped on the branch of a tree. There you are fifteen again with nothing but hope and hairspray, and your wrong-boy date is reaching for you in the movie dark. A thought-flicker lights up your face like screen-flicker, and you know you shouldn’t, but you kiss him anyway. In another old moment, you marry a different wrong boy and that moment is slung like a saddle across the back of a dead, dismembered horse, a horse that gives up wanting you to go somewhere, do something, only you never do. And when your husband leaves you, your heart dries up and flakes into bits, and all your old moments have you wandering a desert, dark sand and cragged hills way off in the distance and you somehow know that on top of those hills are beautiful moments scrubbed free of remember, remember, and so you belly-crawl yourself, dragging your body by the elbows, and you are almost there, and that’s when you see it out of the corner of your eye, another chance at bad romance, and you think this is a new moment and why bother crawling anymore, and wrong love distracts you and you do forget, for a second, for a minute, for an hour, and there with the desert sun parching your mouth, scabbing your lips, you turn away from that hill, happy and even peaceful with the thought of how new and different this moment will be until you get a mouthful of sand, and they all come back, a heartful of old moments filling up inside you, ticking and tocking and ticking again. Francine Witte Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books) She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She is an associate poetry editor for Pidgeonholes. Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) was published by ELJ Editions in September, 2021. She lives in NYC. ** The Key So far in my lifetime, half the species on earth have vanished quietly, offstage, in graveyard hours when no one is watching and glaciers calve. Polar bears sink on a flightless ice shelves turned feather while streetlamps melt in Stillwater. Solid and liquid in limbo, one day rivers rise in Girona as Lake Mead recedes in a recession. I find a key—on the chalk red shore cracked like an elephant’s eye. The door it belongs to long-submerged, the key opens nothing now and I cannot drink it. Allison A. deFreese Allison A. deFreese is a poet and literary translator who has studied in Catalonia. She has two poetry chapbooks forthcoming this fall: The Night With James Dean and Other Prose Poems (winner of Cathexis Northwest Press's 2022 chapbook competition) and Nurdles and Other Poems (Finishing Line). Her work also appears in Pangyrus, Permafrost, and Plainsongs. . ** 1961 She was sitting in her backyard in a folding chair – late March? Staring straight ahead – if not actually at our yard No boundary plantings – or few – we had a young thornless honey locust Her head wrapped like a mummy’s – her eyes showing black as tarvia Two sons under five Mr Silver had died in the accident – she’d hit the windshield I could see her from the picture window in the dining room It would be ten years before the high school would screen Night of the Living Dead – the graveyard scene Filmed in broad daylight – slow persistent images But four or so before her youngest – born of Mr Crystal – would fly in the rec room A hospital bed so the boy – in full body cast – could watch Superman and cartoons Months whiling – the season sweltering – melting to dreamscape The grass browned out under the tree – the house a headland cliff Joanne DeSimone Reynolds Joanne DeSimone Reynolds is the author of two chapbooks, Comes a Blossom, published in 2014 by Main Street Rag, and a collection of ekphrastic poems, Brought to Our Knees, in collaboration with 2020 Art Ramble in Concord, Ma, viewable at theumbrellaarts.org. She lives on the south shore of Boston. ** Shadow Travel A deserted seashore, oversized pocketwatches, a bronze one covered in ants ticks the minutes, bodies shiny rosary beads your fingers press as you pray. Two watches melt, one molded over a table edge, another slung on a withered branch like a limp, skinned carcass. One serves as saddle cinched on a pale beached creature, head one vast wrinkly eyelid, lashes long as the limbs of a daddy-longlegs, a pebbled tongue protrudes from a duck mouth—stranded amid shapeshifting. In the distance, mountains ease into water. An egg basks, shadow pointed to the sea as if to say I’m the beginning, end, and eternity. Outside the reverie, past the frame, a presence casts a massive shadow—time and memories aimed at you—a hot, heavy bullet: the time your first husband’s lung collapsed, the time an oncologist diagnosed your second husband with stage 4 lung cancer—the smother of ache and terror. Karen George Karen George is author of five chapbooks, and three poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Slippery Elm as winner of their 2022 poetry contest, Adirondack Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Cultural Daily, Indianapolis Review, Salamander, and Poet Lore. Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/. ** An All-Night Conversation with You after "Having a Coke with You" by Frank O’Hara If I could turn back time - Cher An all-night conversation with you is better than an afternoon chat with anyone else right now. Maybe because we love absorbing esoteric movies and dissecting them ad nauseum for days. Maybe because we love attending theatres and pretending to be theatre critics. Maybe because I loved to have parties And you loved being a guest in our home. Maybe because we traveled so much. And, now, the world reminds me of you. I would rather see you than – London, Paris, Kashmir, Machu Picchu or Disneyland on either coast. I imagine us a couple of old pillows hanging out on the sofa Stuffing our faces with popcorn and wine. If we invited your wife, could you get a hall pass for one more movie one more conversation? I have so much to tell you. Margo Stutts Toombs A self-proclaimed internal humorist, Margo creates and dwells in wacky worlds. Her poetry dances at Untameable City - Mutabilis Press, a Texas Poetry Calendar, Love over 60: An Anthology of Women’s Poems, Newsletter of the Gulf Coast Chapter of Texas Master Naturalists, The Ekphrastic Review, the 2021 Friendswood Library Ekphrastic Poetry Reading and Archway Gallery chap books. Her flash nonfiction unfolds at Equinox, Synkroniciti, and Airplane Reading. Margo’s videos screen at local and national film/video festivals. She performs her monologues at Fringe Festivals, art galleries and anywhere food and beverages are served. One of Margo’s favorite pastimes is co-hosting the monthly poetry/flash readings at the Archway Gallery in Houston, Texas. For 2022, Margo is the Program Chair for Women in the Visual and Literary Arts, Houston, Tx. Check out her shenanigans at https://www.margostuttstoombs.com/ and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/margo.toombs/ ** A Memory of Mist Usually my eyes skate around the mirror / avoiding the ruts / but today / on my birthday / I look myself full in the face / as the clocks tick / they number all the things I have lost in the silence / I think about the life we burnt / never noticing the absence of clouds / and I know / I do not belong here anymore Did you know / there are ants / who grow their own fungus for food / or white whales that sing like ghostly canaries in the mines of the sea / yet still we think ants are the pests / and we fill the oceans with plastic / so soon the only whales will be bleached relics / hung like chandeliers / reminding us / once / we were not the only beasts So I hang a stopped watch / on the bare branch of a tree / and tuck the last blossom / behind my ear / it leaves the scent of ruin in my hair / I let my skin flake / and morph into a cloud of butterflies / and then I slip out of time / and disappear into the mountains / like so many memories / of mist Adele Evershed Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her poetry and prose have been published in over eighty online journals and print anthologies such as Every Day, Grey Sparrow Journal, High Shelf, Tofu Ink Arts Press, The Fib Review, Selcouth Station, Open Door Magazine, and Hole in the Head Review. Adele has recently been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize for poetry, the Staunch Prize for flash fiction, and her novella-in-flash, A History of Hand Thrown Walls was shortlisted in Reflex Press Novella Contest. ** The Persistence of Memory The fleshy creature draped across a rock bringing to mind my terrier’s passing, tongue paralyzed, folded, drooping as he clung to being, gasping, braindead. A wooden block and clocks that flop (“The Camembert of time”). Ants drawn to a gold watch like bees to nectar. A dried-out leafless tree still trying to climb toward a light shining upon this specter of absolute extinction. The sinking sun casts shadows on the ominous beach, the sea still lit, as are the far-off cliffs, ablaze in a world that unrelentingly decays, a cliff that feels some lifeless sort of glee persisting in a world whose days are done. Martin Elster Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Aside from playing and composing music, he finds contentment in long walks in the woods or the city and, most of all, writing poetry, often alluding to the creatures and plants he encounters. His career in music has influenced his fondness for writing metrical verse, which has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the US and abroad. His honors include Rhymezone’s poetry contest (2016) co-winner, the Thomas Gray Anniversary Poetry Competition (2014) winner, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s poetry contest (2015) third place, four Pushcart nominations, and a Best of the Net nomination. A full-length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019. ** Table’s Edge It’s about that time and Sali looks at his watch, but I make no move because I haven’t owned one since ‘76. Or was it ’77. And then, only because I fancied thick leather watch bands of the day. The 70s. We rinse our bowls and leave them to dry. It’s about that time. I draw a door. We step out of the cliff and onto a passing paper plane. Timing is everything, which some define as luck. We glide through languid clouds above the heat, giving clear sky lightning the dodge and see our destination before we know it. Landing delicately on the table’s edge of eternity has a way of saying you’ve arrived. Sali throws together a forever lunch of cheese and salami with mustard the size of reality he smuggled from France, where now they have a shortage. He’s all slit eyebrows and grins. We picnic with Henri and Alba who are playing the same game of chess under the same leafless tree in the same afternoon sun from 40 years before. It's both comforting and sad when time stands still. I savor an olive, keep this to myself. Sali knows how the game will end, having invented the viewfinder in ’39. What is there to say when the same wind blows while the time-to-stand-still marches on and we view each other as we were then while somehow and somewhat heroically, believing in now, leaving little time for a future that is nothing more than a pencil of lines— magenta and purple, orange and gold, waiting to be drawn, knowing it’s time. Knowing it’s time we catch a ferry and watch a pelican rising, remembering its way home. Henri’s King falls as Alba makes a final move, and though we aren’t there to see it, we’ll never forget, our clockwork minds driven by all that came before. Sali brings mustard back to France, where its absence brought a nation to its knees. A hero’s welcome we did not expect, nor receive. Always late for history we melt into the past only to discover what we already knew. Punctuality was never our strong suit, but memory keeps its own time. Guy Biederman Born in the Chihuahuan desert, raised on a stingray in Ventura, Guy Biederman writes afloat on a houseboat in Richarson’s Bay. His work has appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, Riddled With Arrows, The Disappointed Housewife, Bull, Carve, Flashback Fiction and many other journals. His 6th collection, Translated From The Original: one-inch punch fiction will be released by Nomadic Press in December of 2022. guybiederman.com ** Tipping Point For me, time hangs stretched between a rock and a hard place, unreliable, unrelenting, it slithers from the past to the dead uncertainty of now, after you, feeling trapped, desiccated by the dark of your barren, precipitous world, took one last step. Skyward. Lynda Scott Araya Lynda Scott Araya is a short fiction writer from New Zealand who has most recently been published in The Bangalore Review and DarkWinter Literary. She has work forthcoming with Weasel Press. Currently, she is writing a poetic memoir. ** Memory Cannot Persist Memory cannot persist in such barren times. Which one of you remembers the second time Salvador set fire to himself, his watch wilting in time to the singeing of his moustache, a black stench of fizzling hair snaking beyond the borders of imagination, fumes rising in the desert of madness? Dry biscuits were all his trembling hands could grab before mounting his donkey, racing against the horizon and creating the smoking sunset of the final day of September. Dale señor. There ain’t no smoke without fire and by the time the fire brigade have put down their thoughts all artists will be charred and the well dry. The sick, on the other hand, with their moist coughs need no dousing. They carry, in their splattered handkerchiefs, the weight of abstract expressionism into a future without fathers. No more daddies to ride the donkey back from brittle oblivion. What use is time when we’ve forgotten how to use it? Salvador, or what was left of him, strode in the distance, stroking the donkey’s ears with his false teeth, solid dentures resistant to the licking flames that had returned him to blackened bone and mouthing a clacking melody for a fallen dictator. Listen carefully and the bittersweet harmony of Salvador’s blues will push the blood of your heart into the passing wheelbarrow of hurt. More slop for the the slag heap of time. Let it flow. Let it go. There’s no need for love when the day has been forgotten. You can slip back into yesterday before the fires began. Before the fall. Before he made fools of us all riding our lame mules, eyes searching the sand and sniffing hungrily at his trail of paint. Simon Parker Simon Parker is a London based writer, performer and teacher. His work been published in The Ekphrastic Review and has been performed at the Lyric Hammersmith Studio, Hackney Empire Studio, The Place, Somerset House, Half Moon Theatre, Southbank Centre, the Totally Thames Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Simon is an associate artist of Vocal Point Theatre, a theatre company dedicated to telling stories from those not often heard, and providing workshops for the marginalised. He runs creative writing and reading groups for the homeless, socially excluded and vulnerable. If you want to know more go to https://www.simonparkerwriter.com ** Six Times as Much Interview: ‘I sometimes feel like a god who fell in love with a mortal’ - life for an Inter-Pox couple Written by M. Parsons, Epidemic Features Editor; 10th October, 2081 When I meet Tom and Lola, she is cooking dinner in the kitchen and calls out an artificially slowed hello. I wave quickly, it hurts my wrist. Tom pours me a wine and offers me a seat in their large, plush garden. A water fountain fills the air with the melodic splash of droplets in real time. Lola’s knife pounds a chopping board as a background beat. Tom, thank you for allowing me to interview you today. As something of a celebrity couple, you have done well to stave off the media this last two years. At first we were just learning how to be with each other, how to identify and live within the new parameters of our relationship. It took us some time to realise the full implications of an Inter-Pox relationship. For background, for our readers, can you describe the moment the epidemic arrived at your home? Like every other morning, I woke up, kissed Lola and offered her a coffee. My slurred speech initially made her think I’d had a stroke in the night and she was terrified, getting her phone out to call an ambulance. To me, she was just making odd noises and movements, and I was sort of laughing. The ambulance didn’t come of course - they couldn’t understand her. This, and my cheerful me-ness, made her agitated and upset. She locked herself in the bathroom all morning. Her concern and my giggling gave way then to confusion, followed by a brief flare up of anger. At one point I got dizzy just watching her, lost my footing and fell backwards at the top of the stairs, but her reaction time was amazing – she grabbed my wrists and caught me. As I got my balance back, I realised I had burn marks. Lola was whirring, actually making a noise like a broken machine. Finally I grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled the question that changed everything, “Which one of us is broken?” It’s the question that became the title of your bestselling book. Yes, and sometimes I think that question is more pertinent than ever. Her illness – as we are beginning to see – gives her so many advantages in life. We are looking at two-thirds of the world now infected with Bluebottle Pox. With those statistics, really, what is the new norm? Many are feeling like the world is geared more for Lola and her ‘community’ [he puts this in air quotations] than for those who never contracted the illness in the first place. At Lola’s rate of productivity, it’s not surprising employers aren’t interested anymore in those without the Pox. I even heard that the vaccine effort has been totally abandoned now. Your relationship obviously isn’t broken. In early news coverage, it seemed that most Inter-Pox relationships fell apart within days of the epidemic starting, sometimes hours. How do you make it work? After I wrote that first note, we passed hand-written notes to each other for weeks. We’d hide them in places to discover, it was actually very romantic. The epidemic was obviously spreading very quickly and it wasn’t long before the technology was out there to slow her speech down and speed mine up. But we still write each other letters. And, actually, it’s more than that. My whole being – as a photographer – told me that life was more beautiful in stills. Lola’s career in the city meant she lived at a fast pace and was used to everything being frenetic. We used those skills, experiences, to find common ground. It gave us empathy, I think. There were times in the beginning when she trembled all the time, and her new speed made her a blur to me. I would reach out my hands and place them on her vibrating shoulders –and I’d tell her just enjoy the world in slow motion, see the detail in movement as if in stills. Other times, she would tell me to speak faster, sing quicker, jump, skip, run, which brought me so much joy. Q. Knowing what you do, i.e. how tough it is to engage in physical activities together - I think you know what I’m saying here – and did it ever occur to you to break up, go into conventional relationships with people living at your own speeds? Almost all activities involve a significant loss of lifespan for Lola, so I’m mindful of that. Let’s just say, I try to go a bit quicker, and she tries to go a little slower. No one wants to hurt anyone – either by abrasions, or by boring them to death. We are always trying to keep time with one another. It wasn’t, and isn’t, easy, but we try to imagine that there’s my world, running on slow, her world running on fast, and a middle world, which we have to create and actively step into. Sometimes its harder than others. When Lola moisturises her hands at night, she looks eerily like a fly rubbing its legs together. When she gets insomnia, my infinite snoring makes her murderous. Q. You mention what virologists are seeing more and more - that the Pox shortens the lifespan of its hosts. I will outlive Lola by six times, the same increase in the speed of the data processed by her optic nerve, her muscle responses, the decaying of her cells. I think to others it seems like she has the speed and power of a god, but sometimes I feel like a god that fell in love with a mortal, knowing that I will outlive her by possibly hundreds of years. Q. How do the two of you face this impending end? We laugh six times as much, and she loves hundreds of years’ worth. Katja Sass Katja Sass studied philosophy at university and now teaches philosophy and religious studies at a secondary school in the UK. She writes short fiction with a focus on flash. Her stories can be found at Lost Futures, Janus Literary, Paragraph Planet, The Loop anthology, and most recently as 3rd prize winner at Reflex Fiction. ** The Soft Hours After Salvador Dali The clocks soften, melting until dripping like a tap no one hears. Reduced to the murmur of stirring seagulls at night, to ants lost in the dark. But not so lost that I find you. Not soft enough to clearly remember your face. In the microscopic detail of a painter who sees everything. In the clarity of love's presence. Memory tapping at the soft hours like the night tide lapping at the shore, the reflections on the surface dance to nothing. Christopher Martin Christopher Martin is a poet living at the north east coast of England. His debut collection comes out later next year with The Black Cat Poetry Press. ** The Summer Demands and Takes Away Too Much* in memory of Chris D. Allec (1964-2022) There’s nothing like a death in the family to make a pocket-watch melt and run without a July heat wave to use as excuse, or the guns of August, or poppies. Hands melt under crystal. A silence between ticks etches deeper in ear than Roman numerals while all the room’s clocks play poker-face. My great-grandmother collected them-- Felix the Cat like his Cheshire counterpart, rolling his eyes while hanging on a wall; walnut mantel-clock broadening its seat; in a staring contest with the grandfather just across the room from it. All of that’s grown legs and run, as my dad would claim whenever tools went missing and he looked, determined metal didn’t do such things but stayed in their metal box. Quiet children-- what they used to call good children, before seen-and-unheard became politically incorrect. Now the flies are ganging up, black and abuzz, ready to spread long white rows of rumors under the guise of procreation. Dancing nouns and verbs across a round, golden watch-back which watches nothing but minds tremendously in the mindset that running hands backwards was preferable, if not impossible, as the sun would never consent to backstroke to China, even if the moon could make the sea sit still and mind itself, watch surrounding mountains on a role model on how to become granitic instead of crumbling, rude and sedimentary. My great-grandmother died before summer-- did I tell you that? And now your dad, blood going Fourth-of-July in the sky, into thin air, the winds of leukemia blowing to the north, neighbor’s rubber tree bending in its sway and you feeling roots pull soil, hanging on as they’d say in church. Keep on keeping on. The yard is flat and hard, pocked with rocks, trying its best, like us, not to fall downhill. Some days, gravity and tectonics give slack, a break to catch breath, let thoughts settle even when the underlying strata doesn’t. Maybe that’s the hill’s way, which becomes nothing and everything like watches draped on tree limbs, oozing like brie or camembert. Our brains do just that, memories leaking in an over-ripeness of desire and want for time until absence of both makes yearning fonder, wishing it were the other way around—clocks yielding, waves rolling to crests in reverse. Imagine dust reforming into a complete skin. Microshaved personage back in cloudless affirmation. Waves keep views to themselves, in doing so suggest some things, somewhere, remain timeless. But paint doesn’t stand still, not for a moment of silence. It clamors on. And Mummy Brown is Soylent Green gone visual art and culturally appropriate. Ground and mixed with linseed oil into a subterfuge, to smear into something like immortality by hand. Your father the artist may have loved the thought of it—hugging for beauty’s sake onto canvas long past the rest of us, a calm bench upon which to contemplate his scene. Jonathan Yungkans *Title taken from the poem “As One Put Drunk into the Packet-Boat” by John Ashbery, from the collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Jonathan Yungkans is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer whose ghost, given the choice, would likely choose to haunt the Norton Simon gallery in Pasadena, California for as much as he loves the art there. His work has appeared in Gleam, MacQueen's Quinterly, Panoply, Synkroniciti and other publications. ** Time, Your Grave is My Tree of Life Time, mandrakes, saliva. Cobwebs, spider webs. bushels of bookworms. Wormwood. Swallow with forked tail. Old man, a load of baggage, your pride of life. Numbered years, three score and ten ad infinitum. Son of a perverse father, rebellious mother, lost dominion. Your reward is a tarnished timepiece. Time, you slide like water. I'd like to bend you, straightjacket you strapped to the belly of a meteor, fire you into a nameless galaxy. Like a raven, you sit on my shoulder, like a raven, your bird tracks never cease. I bear witness like a falling feather. Next epoch-- when I reach the other side, I'll look compassionately as you disappear into space. To think we were once close- knit like stitches in a pullover. I'll lock you in a bell tower and melt the key, drown you in a tornado of ticks, scramble you in a wind chasm and sink you in the sea. There're some things your fingers cannot touch--- the praising soul, the handmade poem wrought out of nothing. Deborah Gerrish Deborah Gerrish is the author of four collections of poems, Indeed Jasmine (2022), Light in Light (2017), The Language of Paisley (2012), and the chapbook, The Language of Rain (2008). She was awarded an Edward Fry Fellowship and received an EDD from Rutger’s University in Literacy Education. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Drew University, teaches poetry workshops at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and organizes readings for Visiting Poets. ** Slipping Away This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. - T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men On the horizon pale yellows, whites, blues are reminiscent of the cool of early morning. Yet, it is not cool. Cool is a distant memory. Catalonian cliffs are ominous and jagged. Burnt by blazing sun, the landscape is roasted orange, fiery red. It is calm. Creators and perpetuators of chaos and havoc have vanished, leaving in their wake decay and desolation. An amorphous melting watch is draped mysteriously over a naked branch of a barren tree stripped by lightening of its progeny. Another strangles a monstrous creature, deathly white in its last moments of life, mouth gaping, tongue protruding, desperate for water. Alas! Water only exists in dreams. Ever organized and resilient, ants infest an orange pocket watch, still intact, resisting melt. Soon they too will become listless and succumb to heat and their inevitable fate. This is the way the world ends. Not a bang. Not a whimper. It melts, at first gradually. Then, like lava, the molten mass spreads out exponentially suffocating rot and decay in its deadly path. Slowly, silently, the world slips away. Roberta McGill Roberta McGill grew up in Ireland where she loved reciting poetry as a child. She immigrated to Canada with her husband and lives in Orillia. Her poetry has won several awards at the annual K. Valerie Connor Memorial Celebration, Orillia, and has appeared in several anthologies. ** Seizure Dream I have been here before: door after door after door all leading to the same open landscape. I turn each knob, lean my weight and wait, confronted by confusion again. Inside the seizure Time melts. Crow opens her beak. Down her throat bronze gears spin. Her heart beats a metronome. I float between reality and a dream, body shuddering its morse code poetry, eyes tumbleweeding back towards tomorrow. Muscles ripple along my back as the Moon uses me as her marionette, dancing me along iridescent shimmering tidepools. I have been here before: this reality nested in that one nested in this one, nested in that reality, expanding and contracting with each breath. I try to claw my way to your voice calling me back, but the watery mirage of your words do nothing to release the talons that pulled my soul to this dimension. I’m left with two handfuls of Time, running silver and mercurial down my arms. I open my mouth to say your name and exhale the desert, watch as sun-bleached bones Ezekial themselves back to life. Time rewinds until once again I know nothing, confronted by confusion. I have been here before. Angie Ebba Angie Ebba is a queer disabled writer, educator, and performer who has taught writing workshops and performed both online and across the United States. She's a published poet and essayist with a focus on writing about disability, the body, relationships, and sexuality. Angie believes strongly in the power of words to help us gain a better understanding of ourselves, to build connections and community, and to make personal and social change. Angie can be found online at rebelonpage.com ** Hello, Dali (What’s Your Emergency?) What’s that you say, Dolly? You’re here to slay, Dolly? You’re here to murder décor on the altar of art? In House of Dior, a smear of Lake Mead’s last mud? Your hidden rictus cracked and grinning, your clocks all gone to goo? I’ve got to hand it to you, putting on a happy face. It’s punk. It’s pop! (Though we’re down to our last weasel, and somewhere Lichtenstein laughs until he hiccups, ‘til he cries.) It’s closing in on midnight, Dolly, it’s sneaking up on noon. Here in Death Valley it’s six fifty-five. Let’s call 9-1-1 when time’s a figment and the gizmo on your noggin can’t lose at beat the clock. What’s that again, Dolly? You’re done with men, Dolly? Canary in a coal mine, wind-up bird in a Warhol short, White Shoulder waft, apocalipstick frozen in a velvet Elvis tone? Who the hell am I, Dolly? That homeroom guy…golly! Last row, worst row, still daydreaming lost in the foreign language of your hair. Still hiding my tumescence in the margins: bad poetry and botched conjugation, my felt tip pens aflame. It’s our last gasp, so what’s the good, you ask, this serenade at the end of time? Well, hello, Dolly! Here’s all I know, Dolly: With two tocks left on the Doomsday clock, when I sing I’ll love you forever, (together at last in the aftermath) you’ll know I mean it. Brent Terry Brent Terry is an award-winning writer and a runner who teaches at Easter Connecticut State University. He won the Connecticut Poetry Prize and was nominated for the PEN Faulkner Award for fiction. He is the author of The Body Electric, Troubadour Logic, and 21st Century Autoimmune Blues, among others. He is an accomplished Spoken Word artist. He loves Dr. Pepper.  What's Your Emergency? by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2021  Vision of the Last Days, by Hildegard von Bingen (Germany) before 1179 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Vision of the Last Days, by Hildegard von Bingen. Deadline is August 19, 2022. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules
1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 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 VON BINGEN CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, August 19, 2022. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally! 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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