 Installation view from The Grasshopper and the Ant, and Other Stories, by Jennifer Angus (USA) contemporary. With thanks for images courtesy of the artist. Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, Thank you all so much for submitting your top-tier pieces to The Ekphrastic Review; as in: to the art of Jennifer Angus this time. I have read and re-read your words with great joy and admiration. This was a fascinating challenge, and selecting pieces for publication was a tough task indeed. I hope you will enjoy reading the compilation. Hurrah for each and every writer, for The Ekphrastic Review and for The Wonderful Lorette! Congratulations to all, go well, Kate Copeland ** Fine Dining Fellow Woodlanders be seated! The hard work is done, the best china set out, the heads have rolled and now we are ready to eat the rest giving thanks and gratitude for what we are about to receive. So fear not let us enjoy our feast no one is there to watch us eat. All the rest are just dead meat. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Feast of the Masses commences this fine evening humans long departed, we dine! we the hunted starving – will partake a feast of the masses table laden unfamiliar plates, dishes lain, we dine! like never before no foraging tonight while men sleep, well into cups – fox joins buck, lynx with peacock none prey tonight. Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson loves writing to art prompts and has contributed to The Ekphrastic Review for several years, having recently been a guest editor. Her poems appear in full length of Amazon and in journals including Misfit, Medusa's Kitchen, Lothlorien Review and The Ekphrastic Review, among others. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science and served on two poetry boards. She advocates for captive elephants and shares her home with two rescued feral cats. ** Maddening Guests Delicate dinner, of sizzling ant eaters, for maddening guests. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published and The Importance of Being Short, in 2019. Her most recent book In A Flash, was published in the spring of 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** The deer hunter has been maimed by a grizzly up north (yeah, the same smarmy hunter who wore pants with the scene of a tropical forest and kept his parakeet caged) and the traffickers' trucks have been reported missing. There are flying rumours that all of them were taken at the pass, on the steepest road to Beelzebub's kingdom. Our surviving friends have made their escape and are on their way here. Prithvijeet Sinha The writer's name is Prithvijeet Sinha from Lucknow, India. He is a post graduate in MPhil from the University of Lucknow, having launched his prolific writing career by self publishing on the worldwide community Wattpad since 2015 and on his WordPress blog An Awadh Boy's Panorama (https://anawadhboyspanorama.wordpress.com/) Besides that, his works have been published in several varied publications as FemAsia Magazine, Hudson Valley Writers Guild, Inklette Magazine and others. ** A Darwinian Dinner This supper isn't on Circe’s isle, or else the guests who’ve come to dine would’ve all been turned into swine instead of a menagerie of creatures. Prêt à manger or to be eaten: it’s the survival of the most able to survive. The menu served at this table caters for a spectrum of selected species. Is this stuffed animal court Orwellian in hierarchy? Who hosts this taxidermy feast? Are some beasts more equal than others in this kingdom of claws, furs, fangs, and beaks? Which alpha male Henry beheaded those four heads adorning that bright red wall? What un-wifely treachery was committed by that bodiless, cornigerous quartet? When tea is finally served, will Mr and Mrs Wildcat have stopped arguing? Do Lord Fox and Lady Deer regret having invited them to their soirée? Danny de Oliveira Danny de Oliveira lives on the Sussex coast of the UK. He has been writing amateur ekphrastic poetry for many years, becoming one of his favourite poetic forms. He self-published a book of poems called SURGINGS in 2015. It contains his very first ekphrastic poem entitled "Drowning Hylas," inspired by John William Waterhouse's painting Hylas and the Nymphs. ** memento mori - a scene carrying the seeds of its own destruction a three course dinner served in vignettes i starter I dream I'm in a dining room walls stained carmine with cochineal extract neo classical symbols flow across the walls rams' skulls replaced by ebony deer heads with gilded horns delicate porcelain adorns the table patterned with a tree's lacy tracery spidery branches spreading like ink slowly seeping across paper capillaries drawing it from a brush bristle, water dripping through silty sand a cornucopia of riches spills from the table top there's a banquet for all the senses it's everywhere, including on the floor ii main course stags to the right of me stag beetles to the left I'm stuck here in the middle - what kind of febrile world is this? the foxes seem to smile holding their own court delighted by the cunning ploys as they watch the drama unfold this space is familiar yet not not just my hackles rise it's a scene of tooth and claw fangs are bared the hunters sit among the hunted nothing is quite at it seems life, death - both part of a dream all around a subtle scuttling is sounding many tiny insect feet move antennae, pincers waving tasting the air, sampling the food I hear insidious burrowing noises munch and crunch of chitinous jaws decay's rife amongst all this life iii dessert the tiny creatures are bringing it they know much more about community their special roles in the ant's nest the cohesion of the hive mind what place in all this for beauty? why do the butterflies shimmer so much? there's an iridescent gleam of the beetle shell a light glinting off a deep brown eye the soft velvet of a furry body mirrored in a peach's skin nature has its own chaos Mandelbrot recurrence of complexity patterns emerge, form, reform instincts driving behaviours cycles run on an endless mobius loop creation, nurture, destruction new growth will arise from decomposition and in this room-scene-dream every item curated perfectly placed to remind us humans of our vanitas memento mori Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She has had pieces published inThe Ekphrastic Review and for its challenges, and elsewhere online, and in print in some publications by Dreich, in Poetry Scotland and in several poetry anthologies. She lives in the UK. ** To Jennifer Angus Regarding View from The Grasshopper and the Ant, and Other Stories. Wall bizarre but apropos stands behind your strange tableau -- creatures, as they were, preserved gathered as if being served -- all, perhaps, to celebrate triumph over lesser fate -- here immortal as the art yielding wisdom they impart, stilled to ably represent life surviving by descent chained as both the beast and feast, links that live by links deceased using instinct to sustain birth and nurture to remain overcoming all but that striking down the habitat giving them the time and place reproducing lets them chase role fulfilled in living course man and nature steer by force planned and random leaving trail those unable to prevail mark behind, as fear evolved, truth of future unresolved. 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. ** Reflections Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, from the essay, Nature. And the fugitive hunter had the last laugh, gangly rangers in white trucks charging in, clouds of white dust rising like white-rhino ghosts behind them. The old one with white hair and a pistol picked grapes off the platter, his troops cradling, carrying out the stiff game, like new fathers hold their first babies. Brown and white fur stuck to their green tunics and the oriental rugs, and mud off their black boots made a trail through the house as they searched for the poacher, rifles up, black barrels poking into the empty rooms. A left-behind cat under the table hissed, and one man pissed himself, his green trousers darker on one leg. The old one with the white hair, pistol on the table, laughed and spit grape seeds on the rug. When they were done, all the heads and bodies gone, sparrows flew through the left-open door, ate the grape seeds and nested in the holes in the walls, and when the house burned to the ground only the rats that had chewed the wires got out. The old ranger read it in a paper later and thought of Hemingway, how the writer always shot more than he could eat, and how the game was too heavy for a gangly, barefoot boy to hump alone. 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. ** In Pursuit of Patterns Hosting a Christmas feast for forest animals As the high priestess of the Mother of Beauty, The Insect Lady pours more heart and art Into designing walls than what’s on the table. She serves her Goddess by telling the stories That she insists must be told at whatever price. She knows each insect pays a horrendous price Of no less than life. She would cause no animals To die for an unworthy cause. There are stories, However, of their own species’ unknown beauty Some must be sacrificed to put on the table. Thus vulnerably she defends her ethics of art. From afar we adore the Victorian decorative art But frown at the artist coming near, At what price Have you come by those? She knuckles the table, Scarcely disturbing equanimity of the animals, None of them are endangered, then adds, beauty Is endangered. We neglect to value its stories. We teach children to learn from the ants in the story, Never the grasshopper. We dismiss his idling art. We deny some some species their right to beauty. For these farmed specimens I pay no higher price Than do these hapless ambassadors of animals. And indigenous collectors put bread on the table Because I buy from them. Pastries on the table Are plastic, the insects all real. The stories May be made up, allegorical, but the animals are losing habitats in the actual world. Art Awakens great awareness for a small price, Reveals from hideous things hidden beauty. In jungle nymphs and giant titans dwells beauty; A magpie shows that in the meticulous table Of contents of its baubled nest. Life’s price Is a difficult topic. Lives with no magic stories are swept up and thrown away as beneath art, As poor things without a culture, dumb animals. Cochineal blood is the price of the peach beauty Of this wall. Under it, animals round the table have a symposium on their own stories of art. Lucie Chou Lucie Chou is an ecopoet working in mainland China. Currently an undergraduate majoring in English language and literature, she is also interested in the ecotone between ekphrasis and ecopoetics. Her work has appeared in the Entropy magazine, the Black Earth Institute Blog, the Tiny Seed Journal website, The Ekphrastic Review, and in the Plant Your Words Anthology published by Tiny Seed Press. A poem is forthcoming in from Tofu Ink Arts, both in print and online. She has published a debut collection of ecopoetry, Convivial Communiverse, with Atmosphere Press. She hikes, gardens, and studies works of natural history by Victorian writers with gusto. ** Guests Who need no invitation the first to build and excavate here before we softer things many jointed, spurred and winged armed with jaws and poison stings intricate, opulent stuff of nightmare stuff of dreams alive on leaf and blood and nectar treasure sipped from the flower’s dainty lip–ants and bees in hives and hills beetles jeweled gilt and vermilion blue and green dancing mantids In showgirl finery moths like painted angels crowds of locusts and cicadas singing in the trees engines of decay and resurrection appetites all life depends on trading sweetness for pollen inspiring bloom to fruit and seed there’d be no feast without them Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, the Blue Heron Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible will come out from Kelsay early next year. ** Banquet of Beasts A Duplex Poem, after Jericho Brown With garish abundance a table is set. Above preside the heads of state who with solemn stares officiate. Eden’s garden is garbed in green when humans begin to officiate. Remembrance banners hang in red, for the blood sacrifice others shed. And while they plot and machinate, gift medals for blood sacrifice, the dam has breached and scours land, and with it women and the men. Children reach up stubby hands, as do the women and the men, soon all are gone, swept to never neverland. Extra limbs and strength to swim keeps beasts from never neverland. A few have found the laden table then spitting cats commence to fight. The serpent twists in sly delight as hissing cats commence to fight. Immobile all the others stand, frozen in their silent fright. Men rule beasts and beasts make men, the rest inactive in their fright. How long will tables burgeon full, watched over by the heads of state? Nancy Sobanik Nancy Sobanik graduated from the University of Connecticut and is a registered nurse who discovered her love of writing in the last three years. Publication includes Verse-Virtual June 2023; Sparks of Calliope, March 17, 2023; Triggerfish Critical Review Issue # 29, Jan. 2023, and upcoming in Sheila-Na-Gig Summer 2023 and One Art Poetry, July 15, 2023. Other selections of her poems can be found on poetcollectives.org. She is active in the Maine Poets Society. ** Closer These kids are not behaving pinned To their seats may we go now A grown-ups dinner table Ever so boring I’m not hungry I don’t like my liver pasties Arranging man and ant How it sparks my belly With a wonderful urge A taste for the immaculate a Craving for captivation And ant and ant and ant In mesmerizing pattern So beautiful, translucent The ephemeral flight Pressed down so softly It’s in a story we come Together we are Man and ant Strangely enstrangled where Nature excites us Closer come closer but Outside of these boxes Off the wall Running, rooting Ever so boring Away from us Closer come closer then Let us delight you Excite your foxes, content your cicadas Paint our bodies as you choose Set us up for dancing in mid air Let us swarm and crawl Stage us in a world unnamed To burst and germinate, To rot and decay, to turn to dust and Sail with the eastern winds Disperse and bind again Turn us real time into butterfly A centerpiece for you to exhibit Anything but one more minute in the bell jar Dying of curiosity, time ticking away Kids and cubs, they need to stir But halfway up life’s sleeve I am Enchanted by this tale Its silenced beauty calls to me Nature transcended, the endgame of man So much life dominated so Head over heels My touch of ankle laid bare Victorian sublime Stien Pijp Stien Pijp lives east of the river IJssel, in Gelderland, The Netherlands. Some years ago she and her family moved there to a house in the woods. As a dreamy urban person she experienced nature to be quite unnatural to her and seeks to connect with it ever since. She works as a language therapist and wrote a dissertation about the search for meaning in conversations with people who lost language due to brain damage. She reads stories and poetry of friends and sometimes writes a poem herself. ** So How Was Your Thanksgiving? asks nearly every neighbour, coworker, or street vendor this time of year. I shrug it off with, Oh, the usual: turkey, pumpkin pie, and waiting to see who will be the first one roasted at the table. They laugh. I don’t. But sarcasm usually buys me another year of privacy. They’d never believe the truth. In college, I went home with my roommate one year. First time I’d ever heard of a children’s table. Five siblings and cousins under age eight were seated there. I almost pulled my chair over to join them. You’ve never eaten at a children’s table? they asked. Only child, I explained. Couldn’t admit I was the only child EVER in the house. No wonder people think me odd. I learned my people skills, from table manners to how to speak, from the psychiatrist next door and his patient wife. They even sent me to school, but told me I could never invite a friend over to play. Obviously, I was just one of their subjects. They were the researchers, hoping to learn what? It was quite unbelievable in its way. How did they get carnivores, foxes, raccoons, otters, snakes, and various wild cats, to live side by side with pheasants, squirrels, and me? Was this an experimental Eden? I never heard or witnessed a single attack. All night long, I laid there unprotected, my five-year-old head on a pillow beside whatever new fur baby was brought in to stay. How was I added to the menagerie? Every year meant one new diner at the table and one new taxidermied head on the wall. I began to fear that my head might be the next trophy. Instead of asking questions, I moved to the opposite coast, changed my name, and use a pseudonym, too. Last week a fan letter arrived from the mad doctor, as I think of him now. He used my pen name, but I was still unnerved when he said, I wish I had half your wild imagination. I think of your stories as a macabre version of Winnie-the-Pooh for adults. Alarie Tennille Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. Alarie received the first editor’s choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review, and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop. [ alariepoet.com ] ** THE TRICK (on The Ant and The Grasshopper, Angus, USA) It was his best trick, pinning the grasshopper with his thumb, and taking my hand to its brittle legs rasped, surprised, against a lack of lines, and in my empty palm it spit, lost a leg. I remember the grasshoppers, my grandfather's shills, the quick loss of moveable parts and my alarm at dismemberment -- wings, lost, legs, lost -- or milagros, little miracles, the charms made by mestizos, arms and fists and eyes conjured, offered for the saving of some lost part or strung in a kind of native rosary, dull silver and wearable, their worn wealth the magic and half-death of damaged disappearance: Summer, my grandfather waiting in the portico, my grandfather emptying his pockets. I thought I'd find what wasn't there, the light in his long fingers. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. "The Trick," an early poem, was a part of her Master's Thesis, Crossing Time Lines/ The Grandfather Journey (1992), poems that revealed her fascination with her Grandfather's tricks, many of which had, for her, a magical quality. ** am i the only one weeping over the loss of the beautiful 15000 am i the only one mourning their massacre their capture their dying their mounting am i the only one grieving their stolen lives their exotic habitats their resplendency am i the only one wishing the beautiful 15000 were sipping mating pollinating am i the only one lamenting the terrible sacrifice of the beautiful 15000 the terrible impact on our planet Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith loves and respects the insect world. She recognizes the beauty of bugs and that people in cities want to see them. She also recognizes that the Indigenous folk who capture bugs do so because there is a lucrative market for the beautiful 15000. She also recognizes that these folk earn a mere pittance compared to the middleman. ** Post-Production Not until you’re stuffed, does the dinner party really make sense. And what’s more off the wall than an unsettled guest list to make the bright room appear a great room, appear a pair of paws, or as an aside, the fine line between interior design and the imagined interiority only happens after the dessert is served, after the racoon is seated, post joke, but not yet afterhours. The obscene will only be obvious in retrospect. Jeanne Morel and Anthony Warnke Jeanne Morel is the author of three chapbooks, I See My Way to Some Partial Results (Ravenna Press), Jackpot (Bottlecap Press), and That Crossing Is Not Automatic (Tarpaulin Sky Press). She holds an MFA from Pacific University and has been nominated for a Pushcart in both poetry and fiction. Her recent work has appeared in Black Sunflowers, Crab Creek Review, Fugue, and Great Weather for MEDIA. She is a gallery guide at the Frye Art Museum and co-facilitates the Columbia City Writing Circle with Anthony Warnke. Anthony Warnke ’s poetry has appeared in Cimarron Review, North American Review, Salt Hill, Sentence, Sixth Finch, and Sugar House Review, among other journals. He also publishes scholarly work promoting access and equity at two-year colleges. He earned his Master’s degree in English from Western Washington University and his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Washington, Seattle. He teaches writing at Green River College and lives in Seattle, where he co-facilitates the Columbia City Writing Circle. ** Inside the uterine walls of the dining room time appears to stop except even now clusters of fruit ripen fur rots in thickets like helixes of pine needles swept to the side the rug grows invisible the tablecloth yellows just as teeth do taxidermy is a myth the doe cranes her gentle neck not forever look, what I’m saying is insects are flying off the walls in imperceptible gales the air repopulates the porcelain is turning into a variant of sea glass the animals cycle round and become not quite their wildest breathing selves again not the racoon or crooked-toed pheasant but maybe in a billion years they emerge as you or a dream you had Carolyn Wilsey Nature’s intricacies inspire Carolyn Wilsey to write poems. She holds a BA in American Literature from Middlebury College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Carolyn's poems appear in Pretty Owl Poetry, Rogue Agent, Stirring, Eclectica, Pigeon Pages, West Marin Review, Quiet Lightning, and other publications. In 2020, one of her poems was nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology.
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