​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 Les Saltimbanques, by Gustave Dore. Deadline is November 11, 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. 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 DORE 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, November 11, 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.

Guest editor's note:​

I feel so rich—I know, a crazy word to use here, but “rich” feels right—after having read all these extraordinary submissions from all corners of this planet on which we continually work to open ourselves to each other and to make joy. It’s a challenge—the open and the joy. And so was it to select work here. I gave myself a numerical limit. A combination of energy and craft and some alchemy that sometimes found disparate people I don’t know writing threads of my story that they have no reason to be aware of (some aren’t out there at all) is what led me to these works. I could do nothing but take you in.
 
With gratitude to all of you who submitted. With gratitude to this place for our words. With gratitude to Lorette for asking me.
 
Always,
Annaliese

Red Sky at
 
morning or night? I knew the rhyme
once      before dawn and dusk
became jelly      became a fluid mass
splattered on the horizon
before they stole the hands
of clocks      my watch
leaving their naked faces
round      with shock
 
she’s late again      the carer
the girl with the copper hair
who never stops to chat
pushed for time she claims
I’m not surprised      the way
she fills these walls
with her life story      then
cries at my annoyance
 
no sign of my boy      I’ve been
watching the tan scum of tea 
ride the cup      no idea 
who put it there      where is he?
came last autumn      brought
roses from his garden      a car
is reversing now      fading
odd      same make as my son’s
 
she’s back      the carer
the girl with the copper hair
claims to be my daughter
as if I’m a fool      as if I’d forget
her      nearly seven years old
loves the wig in that dress up box
of memories      just out of reach
like the words to that rhyme    
 
Kate Young
 
Kate Young lives in England and her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and Chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate has been accepted for publication in 2023. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.
 
**

Elsewhere

I still live in our house by the sea. It’s been so long since you’ve been gone, but each day I carry out our routines of walking on the beach and embracing the sunset with a drink on the terrace. Stargazing at night, welcoming the new moon and its phases. I’m alone, but not lonely. Memories keep me company.

Sometimes I force myself to do something different. Once or twice a month I go to the pub and socialize with the locals, but I feel lonelier in crowd. I don’t know how else to explain this.

The other day I thought I’d change my walking venue and ventured into the forest. It was in its autumnal attire, the mix of colours from red to orange and brown. A delight for the eyes. I strolled upon the fallen leaves, tossed them in the air and stood under their colourful shower. It was amazing. Then I came to an opening where the forest ended. I kept walking until I arrived at a place where there were three circles, each drawn by chalk or lime. They weren’t far from each other but distinctly separate. I knew they were portals to take me to you. Not knowing which one to take, I returned home and went to sleep thinking about them.

In my dream you asked, “How to do you know they were portals?”

“It’s just a gut feeling,” I replied.

“Maybe they were stone circles?”

“There were no stones. I observed each one carefully.”

“You do realize I’m elsewhere.”

“I know, but, maybe, just maybe I can visit you wherever you are.”

“What if you end up in the wrong place, at the wrong time?”

“I’ve thought about that, too. It’s still worth taking a chance. The odds are probably 50-50. My life is very boring now, perhaps this will bring some excitement.”

“What if you arrive at a horrible place among hostile people?”

“What if I end up with you?”

“I’d love that, but you know you can’t change the past. The only thing you can change is the present and your future will be a result of that.”

“There you go, you said it. How do you know we can’t change the past? We are wiser now, aren’t we? We probably learned something from the experience. Perhaps we can be more proactive than reactive.”

“How would you know which portal to take?”

“I’ll trust my gut feeling. Not the one on the left. Maybe the centre, or the one on the right. Centre, I’m thinking. Safer.”

“My love, this is a treacherous journey.”

“I know, but what if I choose the right portal and be with you again?”

“It’ll end up the same.”

“How do you know? Even if it does, I’d still cherish the time I’d be able to spend with you.”

“There’s no stopping you.”

“No.”

The following morning, I walked through the forest, stood in the middle of the centre circle, and closed my eyes. Praying, hoping. Behind closed eyes, I could see beams of light. Reds, oranges, yellows of autumn. Then the colours changed, to purple, magenta, indigo, azure, and pale blue. I was transported elsewhere.

Sebnem E. Sanders 

Sebnem E. Sanders lives on the Southern Aegean coast of Turkey and writes short and longer works of fiction. Her stories have appeared in various online literary magazines, and two anthologies. Her collection of short and flash fiction stories, Ripples on the Pond, was published in December 2017. More information can be found at her website where she shares some of her work: https://sebnemsanders.wordpress.com/
 
**
 
A Tender Place                    
 
If you could see me through my living room window,
you’d know I’m at home in this clatter of colour,
 
slight tinkle of teacups, a salamander woven
from pineapple fibres climbing the wall.
 
It’s here I keep company with the bright blue
peacock, a mask from Bali, and its mate,
 
a red-gold lion’s head with bulging eyes. Here I
drink my solitary coffee like the unknown
 
characters in Hopper’s Nighthawks diner.
Sometimes, I grow dizzy, images swirling
 
around my head, like the stars in Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
Or sit at my computer wishing to stroll through
 
Pissarro’s garden with its Plum Trees in Blossom.
I find balance in art, where my spirit hums, trying
 
to harmonize, accept how life gives and takes away.
Divorce from the first husband, death of the second.
 
One moment lost in grief, the other captivated
by a good book about someone else’s life.
 
Here, I can muse about time—how it molts memories
the way birds molt feathers when they’re not needed
 
for movement or courtship. Where I can feel tender.
 
Sandi Stromberg
 
Sandi Stromberg lives in a house filled with an assemblage of colorful, eclectic artworks, as well as masks and rocks collected by her geologist husband. Her poetry has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. Published in many small literary journals and anthologies, she is a dedicated contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, which has honoured her with one of its Fantastic Ekphrastic Awards. She has also contributed to the Review’s “Throwback Thursday” and been a guest judge.
 
**
 
Keeping Watch
    
Ghostly bicycles, or are they coiled snails,
announce the presence
of the animal world.
 
Perhaps the painter is hiding, perhaps she's decided
not to reveal
her signature presence.
 
The world of time reverses itself
as a plunge of green and blue.
Orange is the colour of time forgetting.
 
You once said we must open all doors
to perception.
But it wasn't you, was it,
 
permitting the alteration of time?
Colors collapsing onto themselves,
tender remnants
 
like the one eye looking out from the sea,
keeping watch from this new
orientation.
 
Kathleen Ellis
 
Kathleen Ellis’s most recent poetry collections are Outer-Body Travel and Narrow River to the North. Her manuscript Body of Evidence won the 2022 Grayson Books Poetry Contest. Her poems have recently appeared in The Café Review and in the anthologies Rumors, Secrets, and Lies; A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis; and Enough!: Poems of Resistance and Protest. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission, and the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize from Nimrod magazine, she teaches poetry and creative writing at the University of Maine, Orono.
 
**
 
The maximum load a material can bear when stretched without fracturing.

I am seven, walking in the woods at Burnham Beeches, snuffling for treasure in the leaf litter, like a well-trained hound for truffles. My father keeps me on a short leash. I find a small skull in the bronze crunch, under mouldy rotten branches and fresh fallen beech mast.

We learn Tudor Times at church school: pollarding, coppicing, sheep shearing, wattle and daub, timber framed building, how cows and sheep and pigs grazed on common land before enclosure, how snouts and trotters rummaged free range in these woodlands, how wild boar gave birth in springtime to striped piglets with waggling tails, snorting, eating violets.

I put the skull in my pocket, climb trees and eat rose hips. Years later, I find it, on my father’s birthday—14th October—sorting through detritus, in the family home reclaimed by ivy, piles of decomposing scores, rusty paperclips, coffee grounds and teabags, wool and feathers, in the rain-soaked roofless study.

Mice nest in shreds of Mozart music, clippings of cricket matches and clock mechanisms. Broken lightbulbs cocooned with spiders’ webs and moth wings, crunch underfoot in stagnant puddles. Rolls of sellotape and a set of Narnia Chronicles grow ears of glowing orange jelly fungi. The desk crumbles. It trembles with beetles. I smell the rotten branches, berries and autumn forest floor from childhood.

Brambles crack apart the stonework. In the Highlands, cottages were cleared for grazing. Sheep made more profit for lairds from grassland. Tenants starved or fled to fish or emigrated. I remember the lanolin grease of sheep fleece between my fingers. While lawyers wrangle, my family home falls into strata, sinks as layers of sediment in a murky river, falls into mulch like copper beech leaves, a merz of medicine cabinets, chair legs, vinyl records, concert tickets, pearl bracelets, moth-eaten wool blankets and mouse excrement.

Swallows circle overhead calling into the last top corner of sunlit ice-blue. Air-filled aerodynamic skulls slicing through the storm clouds. Paedomorphic skulls under a thin shield of flesh and feathers. Neither fibre glass nor bamboo is stronger than this two-phase composition of collagen and calcium. This bird’s pneumatised skeleton, inherited from dinosaurs, has incredible intrinsic tensile strength and is perfectly adapted to flight and thousand-mile migrations.

Saskia Ashby
 
Saskia is a poet/artist/academic in the UK.
 
**
 
Time-Molt, Tender, by Annaliese Jakimides 
 
It’s all there:
The dusk, the wind
The monarchs
And the autumn leaves
 
The bicycle you crashed, 
And the wire fence
 
Petals of sunflowers
Cactus, carpet,
Grass that arrived home
On a picnic blanket
Honeycomb and hot asphalt
 
Black seed of illness, grief
Pressed between the thin
Rice paper of your chrysalis 
 
This oldest metaphor
For powerlessness, 
         Risk
 
When Time becomes merely
The snake-skin of your eternity
 
What thrills
Is this most human pain:
No choice
Over the colour 
Of your next wings.
 
Jenna Funkhouser
 
Jenna Funkhouser is a poet and artist living in Portland, Oregon, recently published by Spiritus Journal, As It Ought To Be, and the Saint Katherine Review, among others. Two of her poems won first place in the Oregon Poetry Association’s 2022 Spring Contest. https://jennakfunkhouser.com
 
**
 
Mother Onion
 
I can’t think of my mother 
without thinking of onions
 
and vice versa. She loved those 
vidalias and spoke sweetly
 
to them as she cut, but the purple 
onions were her nemesis
 
and she drowned them into submission. 
Such was her way 
 
in the kitchen and the car 
where she trapped me with her perfume 
 
neck and her clutch foot pressed 
to the floor. She was a manual driver 
 
in an automatic world. And green
with envy. She was hard 
 
like a shell by the time I came along 
for the second half 
 
of her story. Narrative
is a series of scratches or so I’m told 
 
which is not as comforting
as you might think. There was a song 
 
she used to sing, but the words escaped her 
and she had to make up her own. 
 
The melody never suffered though. Sad.
There was not enough sky in her life 
 
and we all knew it. Sometimes 
I could almost see through her skin
 
to the tender girl she once was, but 
the scales were tightly woven and I 
 
didn’t have the tools or the fortitude 
to handle such danger. I would’ve 
 
carried her around in a pillowcase 
if I could’ve to keep us both safe. We joke, 
 
but swimming was never a hobby 
for her but a means of survival. 
 
The fish rots from the head she said 
over and over again in the weeks
 
before her death
and for once she was telling the truth.
 
Crystal Karlberg
 
Crystal Karlberg is a Library Assistant at her local public library. She is also a speaker for Greater Boston PFLAG.
 
**
 
Deep within Green’s Leafy Swell
—a pantoum
 
The raptor hunts. It scans for prey. 
Great fear engulfs the garter snake. 
It slithers near the risky edge. 
Hurry, go! Though where? Which way? 
 
Great snake dispel your trembling fright. 
The threat is real, no turning back. 
Now hurry, find a safe escape! 
Ah, precious weeds like roof or veil. 
 
The threat is real, no turning back. 
The corvid caws, then gnaws a shrew. 
Beloved weeds: the serpent’s shield. 
Hide deep within green’s leafy swell. 
 
The corvid gnaws, then caws with gust. 
Snake slithers near the risky edge. 
Hide deep within green’s leafy swell. 
The raptor hunts. It scans for prey.
 
Jeannie E. Roberts 
 
Jeannie E. Roberts has authored seven books. Her most recent collection, As If Labyrinth – Pandemic Inspired Poems, was released in 2021 (Kelsay Books). Her eighth book, The Ethereal Effect – A Collection of Villanelles, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Her poems appear in Anti-Heroin Chic, Blue Heron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Panoply, Silver Birch Press, Sky Island Journal, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and elsewhere. She’s a Best of the Net award nominee and serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. 
 
**
 
Scene from an Industrial Childhood

My father came down from the factory,
came down from the factory with his steel hands,
his steel hands and his stone face, his heart,
his heart as soft as water, as air, as soft as,
as soft as flowers. My father came down,
came down with the flowers and the animals,
and the animals loved him and followed him,
and followed him with flowers in their mouths.
In their mouths, they held words like love,
words like love to conjure rain, and my father,
my father raised his collar and lowered his voice,
lowered his voice until it was quieter than flowers,
quieter than flowers in steel hands, quieter than,
quieter than, quieter than his beautiful stone face,
his beautiful stone face that softened with a word,
with a word like love, and all the animals whistled,
whistled like freedom, as my mother waved, wild,
waved, wild as love, as my father came down,
came down from the factory to hold her tight,
to hold her tight in the love of their shining son.  
 
Oz Hardwick
 
Oz Hardwick is a poet, photographer, academic, and occasional musician, whose work has been widely published in international journals and anthologies. He has published ten full collections and chapbooks, including Learning to Have Lost (Canberra: IPSI, 2018) which won the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry, and most recently the surrealist political chapbook Reports Come In (Clevedon: Hedgehog, 2022). Oz is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University (UK). www.ozhardwick.co.uk
​

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 Señor de Los Milagros, possibly by Benito or Pedro Dalcon. Deadline is October 28, 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.​
​

Symbiosis

Animals, birds, and people, sitting on each other, with a killer whale on top. Why? Is it to give the killer whale some height so that it can look far away? Maybe they are friends, giving the killer whale an opportunity to see the lands on the other side of the shore. The killer whale outstretches its fins, forming a peace shape. Will the animals give the killer whale enough strength to take off and soar into the air like a bird? Every creature holds the ones above them. A raven in the bottom bears the weight of all the other creatures. Each of them support the killer whale, giving it energy to fly. Their little contributions adding up to a huge amount. The killer whale can take off now, with the height and strength given by the animals below, and explore the world beyond the ocean.

Kavyn R. 
​
Kavyn is a ninth grader who loves anime and bread. He lives in his cozy nook doing art, poetry, and math.

**

The Condor Returns
 
For the first time in over one hundred years
the condor returns to Northern California.
For the first time since the big death,
we see new wings taking off
after birth and rebirth. 
 
The totem pole tells us the story
of the evolution of the human spirit,
of our kin, our belonging, our journey, our symbols:
when you’re done you soar high above
what tied your body and spirit.
 
The world we know is only a description
handed down from generation
to generation.

Poets, artist, stop the world.
Be the ones who remakes interpretation.
Allow people to see instead of just looking.
Call the Condor.

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? (Kelsay Books July 2022) and WHISTLING IN THE DARK (Taj Mahal Publishing House July 2022), are both available on Amazon. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

**

flight
 
no thing with wings chooses to crawl.
the woodcarver, a man, stood tall
you in his long tribal shadow.
where does a woman like you go
with knives and native grit? windfall 
 
is a straight tree. the call primal 
to feed what cries out at nightfall--
to the rooted tree a deathblow.
no thing with wings chooses to crawl.
 
with each thwack, the birds withdrawal 
to the sky. there’s a protocol
for roosting and flight. there’s a glow
at dawn. the native carvers know
how to sing & soar with a chisel.
no thing with wings chooses to crawl.

Robert E. Ray

Robert E. Ray is a retired public servant. His poetry has been published by Rattle, Beyond Words International Literary Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and in four poetry anthologies. Robert lives in coastal Georgia. 

**

Sages

Storytellers, sages of history ,
Cradle time in their words.
Be still and hear the echos of the past,
The hills resound with their murmurs.
Footsteps follow the ancient trails,
The heart knows the journey.
The elders do not seek, they know.
Trees pour out their sap of wisdom,
Animal spirits impart their totem.
Rumination’s visit from the stars,
The passing years illuminate our souls.
We are not wise, we are untied
Tether our consciousness 
To the voices that came  before us,
Be quiet and listen to the Earth.

Carol Tahir

Carol lives in Southern California and has had a few poems published in anthologies, online blogs and journals. She divides her time between painting, reading and writing. ​

**

Woulda Coulda Shoulda

Before we lost you I had planned to take you north to see the totem poles up in Canada.  Your view of Douglas firs would be a blurry from the dog nose prints left on the window. Soon we would see country where more Sitka spruces would start to appear. From the front seat I would be playing teacher and boring your now teenage self with stories about how Sitka sprues were called ‘wolf trees’ because they had big open spaces with great outreaching braches.  Even with headphones obscuring a bouncing head I would have caught your wide smile in the rearview mirror.  I’d keep bragging on the stacked totems, how beaver, raven, bear, and even eagle were waiting to tell you about your future with animals and how stars were beginning to line up for you, my grandson.

But this never happened, because before you found your power and grew your blowhole large enough to take in water, we lost you. You were always about water from your strong breast stroke to beaming in a photo in front of that tall,   lean waterfall. Maybe you thought yourself such a great swimmer you figured you’d make it, or maybe a very dark spirit had already staked its mortal claim, or maybe the totems would have healed you with their big toothed grins. Yes, they would have. 

Ursula McCabe 

Ursula McCabe lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her work can be seen in Piker Press, The Avocet, Oregon Poetry Association’s Verseweavers, Bluebird Word, and Academy of the Heart and Mind.  

**

Pole Star

Here’s cupid heart cut into bark,
the timber frame for barque or home;
first nations carved their story too -
an ancestry, family tree.
Algonquian wood, totemic stood.
While others kneel at altar steps
and would alter inheritance,
they stand to ban native device
though fail to understand the craft,
or storeyed picture book of past.
Dust to dust but ash to pole,
for funerary casket cache,
a welcome sign or ridicule, 
pot-boilers in the tourist trade,
community, kinship support.
Neel before all with female skill.
You see the wood before the trees.

Stephen Kingsnorth

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review.

**

On Native Artist Ellen Neel

As feat iconic each would stand
to mark possession long of land
by generations thus endeared
as spirit that had persevered

to earn enduring totem made
that honoured roles their strengths had played,
first will, determined to persist,
then skill devised to coexist

with nature's growth from its decay,
and predators becoming prey,
in seasons of repeating course
implying greater present force

that moved adept, creative heart
to be the hands of native art.

Portly Bard

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.

​**

To a Grandmother I Never Knew
 
Did you ever
marvel at the intricate carved wings
of some eagle
 
or stare
in wonder at cedar-hewn faces, cheering
this new world?
 
What did you
make of fine stacks of ancestral symbols
so alien to you?
 
Let me place you,
a young woman, hungry and shell-shocked
from your epic journey
 
with its endless gusts
of ocean gales; with its steam-train crawl
across a continent
 
that heaved you past
cities, lakes, prairies; past forests and mountains, 
to this near wilderness.
                                                                
You look up,
startled by some sacred, ancient totem pole:
your glance full
 
of curiosity or
is it fear? Those haunted eyes! Do you panic
and ask: “Why am I here?”
 
Do you fight off
familiar sickness: that fierce swell of frantic longing
for the old world,
 
for the salt marsh,
with its curlews, its sheep, its sea thrift; for your firstborn
lost in its mists?

​Her Crown

Seabear carries her largest child
Black     white      red     nursing
Her husband
Held strong by his inner beings
Slippery frog keeps his honest 
Bak and raven keeps her safe
In Stanley Park

J. L. Wright

J. L. Wright has published two hybrid poetry collections, Unadoptable Joy and Homeless Joy. Published on four continents, J. L. participates with several different poetry groups including IWWG, Jersey City Writers, Poets on the Coast, and Village Books Writer’s Corner. J. L. develops poetry craft while influencing students during community education. 

**

Shebungaa

I was walking by the riverside watching tiny fishes straddling the stream. The aroma of damp soil was in the air. It must have rained last night. I sat by a big rock watching the sunrise, toddler rays sprinkling their warmth like a mother’s morning hug. Love and longing gathering in her body overnight, the mother rushes in the dawn darkness to find her child, to hug her little darling, her spit, sweat and coziness in tow. In a few hours however, this gentle morning will become the blazing noon. Tender mother will turn into an evil witch, scorching the earth, punishing her child for mischief and languor. 

I never met my morning sun. 
​
My mother left me when I was a baby. She wasn’t ready for a child and a girl at that, especially one that looked like a portmanteau of world’s evil. Now, right at this instance, I don’t fault her. I’m a grown up. But I spent the first 15 years of my life blaming her for giving up on me. When she eventually found her way to me and tried to patch things, I had already grown into a beautiful, kind, young woman, no thanks to her and I wasn’t ready to let her in. I couldn’t suddenly fill the empty space in my heart with someone who showed up a decade too late. That space was expansive when I was born, but over time it kept shrinking and had finally settled into a tiny fragment, the size of a mustard seed. 

When I told this to my friend, he suggested I visit a healer. 

“You should go see Shebungaa.”

“Who is Shebungaa?”

“Shebungaa is the cousin of Bak’was the Wildman of the Woods, a red cedar being, an all-knowing spirit of the forest. 

“Is Shebungaa a he or she?” I asked. 

“No one knows. Shebungaa have no gender, they are beyond such trivialities. They are simply Shebungaa, wise and powerful.”

This comforted me and gave me a tiny bit of hope. Next day I travelled to the park to see Shebungaa and asked if they could turn my mustard seed heart into a lemon ball. Or bigger.

Shebungaa stared at me as we stood facing each other. They reached into the mountains, twisted their hands to pluck an essence from the top, from the wings of Kakaso’Las and placed a tiny speck of light in my palms. A gift, they called it. 

“Guard this with all you have.” 

“But… I don’t know how. I’ve never done this before.”

“Grow this each day, nourish it.”

“How will it grow? What if it dies? What should I do? I don’t know how to take care of things. No one took care of me, so I never learned how. I don’t know if I can do this.”

Shebungaa looked down and up, then closed their eyes as I rambled on, “What if you’re making a mistake? I thought Shebungaa are supposed to be helpful and wise. Do you realize what you’re trusting me with?” 

Shebungaa was walking away. The mountain light rested in my palms. How is this going to help my mustard-seed heart? 

Honestly, I had expected a show, a miracle. I had imagined Shebungaa reaching into my chest and healing my heart with light and magic. Instead, they handed me light itself. I was a tad disappointed and a whole lot scared.

That was then. 

For three years I have been guarding the speck. I flamed it, nourished it and spread its light and warmth every day, even when it seemed impossible. The speck grew, the light grew. The orange-gold iridescence renewed souls. And the reason I sought Shebungaa in the first place? That was happening too. I could feel the space in my heart growing. More and more people visited the mountain light seeking the beauty of malleable heart, seeking wisdom. Seeking the infectious exuberance. Seeking strength and ecstasy. 

That’s when trouble started. I realized that the line between good and evil is not only flimsy thin but an illusion. Good became bad and bad turned to evil like fast burning forest fire. I hadn’t witnessed such jealousy, deception and gluttony before. Some wanted the flame for themselves. Others simply wanted it gone. No one thought about the hard work or sacrifices needed to nurture the flame. They couldn’t see. They were blinded by greed. They saw power and coveted it. Then one day, just like that, it was gone. The light was destroyed. Whatever had opened inside me shrunk again. 

If only I hadn’t let people near the light. If only I had been more careful. If only I could find Shebungaa again and beg them for another speck. If only. If only. If only. 

I wandered with no hope for months and stumbled into a desert one evening. Tired and beat, I crouched by a cactus, thirsting for life. Hours went by as I sat peering into the sand. A lizard came out from under a rock, grabbed a roach and scampered back to its hiding. 

“Something is killing something else. All the time.” 

Was that Shebungaa’s radiant voice? Or me thinking out loud?

All the history and zoology lessons I didn’t pay attention to in school were coming back to me. Cheetahs and coyotes kill deer and elephants. Deer and elephants eat plants. The hyena feasts on rotting flesh. 

“Why should humans be the exception? Are you blind to the nasty hyenas among humans, salivating at the sight of red meat? If there are deer and elephants, there will also be coyotes and cheetahs among us. Have you forgotten? Or do you not want the struggle?” 

I couldn’t tell if Shebungaa was guiding me from outside or within. Either way, this is the second gift. Anything good must be protected and goodness is always worth the struggle. Light flickered in my chest.

I can see the moon rising now. Glimmer and hope too. 

Sowmya Krishnamurthy

Sowmya Krishnamurthy is an artist and writer who lives in Chennai, India with the love of her lives, Kavyn and Navilan. She writes fiction, poetry and weekly menus for her family. Her work has been published in The Birdseed, 3MoonMagazine, The Visual Verse and elsewhere. She can be found sleepwalking on Twitter @sowmya.

**

Finding the Right Words

It was late afternoon on the day of the equinox and Shona was in the land now designated as a small public park that held the four totem poles belonging to her family.

'Charlie, you gotta see the colours!  Look at all the cool animals, they musta loved them!  That one on the bottom of the front one - I swear it's Sonic The Hedgehog! Shame it's kinda behind the grass.'  The voice floated across from the other side of the low boundary fence.

Shona was used to visitors reacting to the totems in their own way.  This particular set were placed in quite a photogenic arrangement so were a regular stopping off place for what Shona called the drive-by tourists, the ones who'd pull up to the parking space and sometimes not even get out of their car.  They'd just grab their phone or an i-Pad, point and click, and most likely post to their socials later on.

Of course, a few stopped and got out, wandered around the poles and even read the information board.  The details on there had been recently updated, with input from Shona's family.  She wondered how much could be said in a one metre by a half metre board?  In fact the information was scant, a few basic facts about the approximate date of construction of each pole, the name of their community.  There  was a reference with a QR code to other resources should anyone care to find out more.  Shona gave a kind of mental 'huh' as once again the thought came that it didn't even name-check great-aunt Ellen, the artist behind the front pole, even though she knew that the omission had been a collective decision.  

Shona waited for the car to move off and wandered round the totem poles.  The autumn equinox was a special time, one among many in the cosmic calendar that held the important memories.  She stopped in front of the 'Sonic' one and ran through the retelling of the history of this world, the journeys through its lands, the world before and the one beyond.  Others from her family would arrive soon to join her.

Words mattered.  There would recitations later, some known only to her oldest relatives.  These words would never be shared with the university researchers or the journalistic types who came out to write op eds about the place.  Words held power and strength and memories and a connection from the past to the future, the flow of energy around the universe and all the stages of life's journey. Each totem might serve as an external reminder but the truth of the cosmos was in the collective oral tradition.

For a second Shona attempted to see the poles through the eyes of the tourists.  She appreciated the fine workmanship and beauty of the carvings, the vibrancy of the paintwork.  Ellen truly had a gift, not just for working the wood but for capturing the narrative.  Try as she might Shona couldn't help reading the stories of the people and the land, the ancestors and the generations to come as she took in each symbol.  That bird wasn't just a bird, that head was more than a representation of a person.  Even the spacing and arrangement of the poles themselves held special significance, one that would be refreshed and revealed later on at sunset.  Tonight was going to be especially good, a mostly cloud-free evening and an early moonrise meaning the setting sun and moon would appear together.  Later on, this designated dark skies site would offer a tantalising glimpse of the milky way, gateway to the wider cosmos.  The equinox was a special time of balance, harmony and interconnectedness of all things as well as a gateway from one season to another.  The gathering would reflect that.

Anyone looking from the outside would just have seen another tourist moving slowly between the poles, a bit more contemplative than some, but nothing unusual.  Shona knew the power was in the words yet to come, the rest of the time all that knowledge and wisdom were just hiding in plain sight.

Emily Tee

After years spent with numbers Emily Tee is now spending her time writing poetry and flash fiction.  She's had pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges and in print in several Dreich publications and poetry anthologies including Hope is a Group Project, by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, with other work forthcoming elsewhere. She lives in England.

​**

                                               
Thunderbird
                                               
                                              "My grandfather loved thunder storms.
                                               He loved to see the restless weaving
                                 of trees..."
                                                   Edward Hirsch, Ancient Signs

                                        "The goal of life is to make your heartbeat
                                          match the beat of the universe, to match
                                          your nature with Nature."
                                                       Joseph Campbell, Reflections On The Art of Living 

                                        "Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over."
                                                                                                                           Joseph Campbell


      How many were the mornings    when I watched the light unfold
      inside the raven's night-black wings?    And found out what

       the Kwakiutl know --    The Raven brings The Green!
       A girl, I dreamed Green Mansions --    the rain's long fingers

       touching leaves    and I was free (or so I thought)
       to take a chance, embellished by the elements    in ways

        I learned to turn the page to nature    my fate designed
        by a water fall of words;    and art, illustrations for the faces

        on a totem pole    stacked like chapters in a serial romance
        ignited by the wilderness.    At the top, inside the carved paws

        of the Spirit Bear    an Orca struggles with the forest's passion,
        a pulse so strong it transforms    creatures from the sea
   
         to humans, a Man      sheltered by the Thunderbird, its flight-
         pattern  lines in turquoise    as the sea surges through the trees

         for an unlikely couple --    Bak'was and Dzunka, wild man
         and woman, she, a giantess;    Children fear her whisper

         in the woods --    Hu! , she says, her voice's hoarse sound
         wind in the cedars    as spirits of the trees eat ghost food

        out of cockle shells, congregating    in invisible houses (Somewhere
        i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience...)   as the girl

        in the rain forest travels through fire in a fairy tale    rising on Thunder-
        bird/Phoenix wings     to look for her legend of true love, the rain forest

        story of a native American prince
                                                              who appears in the song of a totem frog.

Laurie Newendorp

Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston.  Her book, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020, explores the relationships of art, surreality and poetry. One of Ellen Neel's totem figures, the Spirit Bear, refers to the creation myth of "ghost" cubs born to the black Kermode bear.  The bear was named (to the poet's surprise!) for Frank Kermode, an early 20th century zoologist, whose name suggested a romantic nature for her poem:  Sir Frank Kermode, a literary critic, came to the University of Houston when Newendorp was a poetry student.  One of his books, The Romantic        Image was a reference source for her poetry thesis.  "Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience" is the name of a poem by e.e. cummings that ends with a beautiful line, apt for a rain forest, "not even the rain has such small hands." The Kwakiutl and Tlingit transformation masks in the North Coast Gallery of the New York Museum of Natural History started Joseph Campbell  on his "hero journey" in writings that began the poet's fascination with myth.