 Downtown Nights, by Joy Baer (USA) contemporary. Click on image for artist site. Dear Ekphrastic Writers, You are my people. I so admire your limitless creativity and surprise. That’s why reading so many submissions, several times over, was more pleasure than work. Thank you all! Congratulations to my Top Twelve! My apologies to those I did not accept. I’m a less is more type, and I’m sorry that meant turning away most of you, even those I’ve accepted or nominated for prizes in the past. You’re about to see how wonderfully varied the viewpoints are – not just night and day different, but spring and winter, somber and playful, flash fiction and poetry, beautiful and witty, downtown and out in nature, even skipping off to another universe. A big THANK YOU TO ARTIST JOY BAER for inspiring your talent! Please visit Joy’s website to learn more about her and her artwork. And thanks always to Lorette C. Luzajic for bringing our ekphrastic community together. Happy reading! Alarie Tennille ** Deck the Halls with Love and Folly It was his arm around her waist I saw first, her bright yellow raincoat caught in the headlights of impatient queuing traffic: people rushing home on Christmas Eve. I was watching from my window. The rain had just begun to fall. I felt glad to be tucked inside four walls glowing orange, fire crackling spitting, and sprinkling embers on the hearth. I didn’t know which one I should be thinking of. The one who’d shared so many of my days, who called me to say nothing much at all except he missed me, but take all the time you need or the one I wanted wrapped in tinsel and delivered to my door, who made blood rush to my head and turned my belly into a pit of snakes. The windowpane was now a muted kaleidoscope of colours. Sinatra crooned, the wine was mulled and I sipped it thinking I had not been good. No need to put the milk and cookies out. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman is a Poet living and writing in the coastal village of Lake Tabourie, New South Wales, Australia. She has been writing poetry since April 2021. Her formal qualifications are in Business Management and Personal Training so she immerses herself in reading classic and modern poets and studying the art of writing poetry. Linda has recently been published in three anthologies, and also by viewlesswings.com and in The Ekphrastic Review. ** Hidden Treasure a tall magnolia spreads its large leathery stiff deep green leaves each bigger than my palm, rich, cool under my fingers it casts long shadows on a bright blue-sky cloudless afternoon creating chiaroscuro in this courtyard garden corner I want to lean in to the tree's embrace its rigid branches strong, supple, dark, enveloping, find respite from too much brightness, heat I inhale it, its woody scent over another softer citronella note then a surprise flash of startling white – a single perfect bloom the silky floral globe as big as two fists wafting its perfume unexpected, alone months after spring and blossom time this perfect pale orb's hidden treasure Emily Tee Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers. In retirement she's started writing poetry and flash fiction. She has had pieces published for The Ekphrastic Review challenges and in print with Dreich magazine, with others forthcoming with Dreich and elsewhere. She lives in England. ** New York Nights in Another Universe As time passes, I see you more & more as glimmer, window glare on a passing train—whoever joins me in its wake will see only the dull olive hues of the subway tunnel, but my retinas still remember the vibrant flash, the full spectrum of your heart’s technicolor beats. Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum is a writer and teacher born and raised in Alaska. She has published eight books of poetry and fiction through her company, Red Sweater Press, in addition to dozens of individual pieces in numerous literary magazines. She currently serves as President of Alaska Writers Guild and Editor in Chief of The Poets' Touchstone, a publication by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. ** City Lights I’d walked down the street many times in both day time and night time and not noticed them. I’d driven down there many times in both day time and night time and not noticed them. But something seen so often may become unseen without a new perspective, a new dimension. And tonight I climbed higher to see the street from above. A mosaic lay below me, a city of squares. Squares, where there were no squares before. Squares of light projected like an art installation, broken and fragmented making the ordinary into extraordinary. 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/ ** Geometry of Urban Landscape A liquorice river parts the neon heat. There’s a hum where songbirds cannot be. Look, a pick and mix flecked sweet shop of night energy, squares, towers, blots in Morse code, places to lose your soul, hang out with strangers you’ll never meet again. You dance in clubs, on pavements, below those sky-scraping giants, escape the bills and who you really are, pretending it’s a masked ball. Maggie Mackay Maggie Mackay’s pamphlet, The Heart of the Run, Picaroon Poetry, 2018 was followed by her full collection A West Coast Psalter, Kelsay Books, 2021. In 2020 she was awarded a place in the Poetry Archive’s WordView permanent collection. She reviews poetry pamphlets at https://sphinxreview.co.uk (Happenstance Press)and collections at The Friday Poem (https://thefridaypoem.com).She can be found on Twitter @Bonniedreamer. ** falling like rain In my dreams I lack a destination, but I continue to travel through the landscapes, visiting mysterious buildings with hallways that form mazes, that leave me unable to find the right room – late for a meeting, a test, a rendezvous with no time or place attached –living in houses that seem familiar yet not quite right, filled with people whose names I don’t know. It’s always dark with artificial light, often below ground. Staircases are a common feature. Cats and dogs wander in and out of narrow shadowed empty streets, and I always miss my train. What day is it? I have no idea. What did I do yesterday? I can’t remember. But I’m pretty sure I’m awake now — aren’t I? Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig resides in NYC where she plays with words and images. You can follow her work on the blog she does with her friend Nina, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/, or at https://kblog.blog/. ** Not Wait in Vain She looked up at the mottled skin of the housing complex that seemed to quiver with the flickering of the lights, flexing reptilian muscles. Each square of brilliance, red, blue, green, white was a window. She wouldn’t have used the word ‘home’ even if it had been a familiar one. Cells. Bees. Except that bees had been useful. They didn’t talk about bees any more. A transport train zipped along a rail fifty yards up, flying through darkness. Closer, at ground level, the beams of a patrol vehicle sliced the darkness as it passed with the whirr of a metallic, predatory insect. She moved on, the sound of her footsteps too loud. Not that the night was silent. Some of the windows were open, parties, frantic, music loud. Police drones droned. Someone threw something out of a window, too many levels up to count. She heard a scream and corrected herself. Someone threw someone out of a window, too many levels up to count. The night was not silent, but her footsteps rang out high and clear, arresting. The sound was a quiet intrusion, like the persistent cough in the middle of a symphony concert, like the flick of a knife blade in the clamour of a fight. No one ever walked the city night. She hunched her shoulders against the lights of the mottled dragon, let her gaze drift along the restless concrete river of a highway, an artery irrigating half-life. The highway rolled between hundreds, thousands of complexes, their skin flickering with luminous warts. She had no idea how far the never-sleeping dragon coiled. Hundreds of miles perhaps. It didn’t matter, as long as its coils ended somewhere. It didn’t matter because it was time to accept that no one else would be walking the city night. He would never come down from his blue or red or green room, not now. Not even for her. A hundred feet up, a light flicked from green to red before it went out. The traffic whined and whispered, not now, not ever. Laughter rattled inside her head. She swallowed back all the longing, the tears, the anger and despair and began to walk. 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. ** In a Galaxy Not Far Away Gone our walks past the art school. Gone its glass-block wall. Gone my walking partner, our flickering shadows. Rush-hour reflections no longer waver in the glass like supernovas—white headlights, red taillights. Gone the blue-green night of downtown’s encroaching darkness. Demolition, another kind of death. But isn’t that the way of the universe? I enter an earthly space of timeless symbols as cinematic as photos sent back from outer, or is that inner, space where the gas and dust of a nebula can be either the explosion of a dying star or where new stars begin. Each glass square witnesses a story. The first time we touched hands, a shooting star. The first time we kissed, a pulsar in the sultry heat of a Southern summer. Now my walking partner no longer orbits my life. I imagine he has entered another dimension, translucent as these glass blocks, in another galaxy not far away. Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg loves the marriage of poetry and art and is a frequent contributor to The Ekphrastic Review’s biweekly challenges. Her poetry has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. She lives in Houston, the city of NASA and space exploration, where so often architectural marvels are demolished to make way for the new. The loss of the old Glassell Art School’s building, a tour-de-force of reflective glass blocks built in 1978, caused considerable upset. It was seen as a sacrifice of the city’s architectural heritage. ** Tomfoolery? Fractured flimsy images of a time gone by Music, dance and other tomfoolery Holding court for all to see. Brazen and baffling Conniving and cajoling Life from a carcass. Let it be for all to see That things are not always What they appear to be. Ellie Klaus Ellie Klaus was born and raised in Montreal. She has lived different selves over several decades: daughter, wildlife biology graduate, vision quest traveler, family life educator, president (of her son's school committee), friend, confidante, lover, wife, mother, caregiver and now caregivee, if there is such a word. Each has contributed to a different perspective of living, of life. The pieces of the puzzle are evident and coming together, although the final image is yet to be revealed. So, writing has reemerged as a creative endeavor to release some of the angst that arises from living a confined life, or any life for that matter. She has a poem entitled 'Bones' that appears in NationalPoetryMonth.ca April 9, 2020 and poems published in The Ekphrastic Review and Pocket Lint. ** Glass Lilies this is the city rippling with life a million pixelations rainbow shards cast like glass lilies skating wet pavements this is the city lights flickering bouncing off steel automated fireflies abseiling glaze eerily beautiful this is the city the anonymity of it drawing me in the tramp and shuffle of footed expectation silvered in mercury this is the city Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and has been passionate about poetry since childhood. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Poetry Village, Words for the Wild, Poetry on the Lake, Alchemy Spoon, Dreich, The Poet and Fly on the Wall. She has had poems in two Scottish Writers Centre 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. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** My Wings Are Not Waterproof A murderous mid-afternoon in June, as I sink below the surface of the pond, thirty thousand waterlilies reflect and refract in my compound eyes. Falling through fathoms of cold khaki, down in the dark deep algae, lemon and lime light splinters on sticklebacks, flicking fish scales flash onto my failing lenses the supernova of my universe. Saskia Ashby Saskia Ashby is an artist, poet, academic and theatre practitioner from the UK. ** Carefree It’s that bare toes in the grass Feeling Dew jumping against ankles Green blades parting and undulating In partnership of streetlight and moon. It’s that giggle for no reason Feeling Just an instinct Crowned with joy An internal invisible shimmer. It’s that single wild strawberry Feeling Unexpected gift from the roadside Solitary succulent delight Testimony to all things sweetly innocent. Melinda Dewsbury Melinda experiences poetry as therapy, a kind of grounding exercise that connects physical embodiment with big ideas and deep truths. During the pandemic, she and her mother wrote Pandemic Poems back and forth to one another. In 2021, their experience was featured in an interview and poetry reading on CBC radio’s On the Coast. Melinda lives in Langley, British Columbia.
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