 Green Terrain, by Kelly Austin-Rolo (USA) 2019 Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, Thank you all so much for submitting your Green Terrain-pieces to The Ekphrastic Review. It was just wonderful to read your words, prompted by Kelly Austin-Rolo’s encaustic artwork…making it indeed difficult to decide on an appropriate, honourable selection. And here it is! Congratulations to all you writers, I hope you enjoy reading all the pieces. Such joy to have TER and the amazing Lorette around! Thank you all, warm wishes, Kate Copeland ** Note from Lorette: Come to our upcoming workshop to meet Kate and follow her inspiration from fashion in art and literature. Kate will present on the meaning of clothes, such as Anne Sexton's famous red reading dress. Lorette will present on fashion in art history. Sign up here, or after the poetry selections below. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrasticwritingworkshops.html ** Encaustic Terrain It is at night that the old hills, worn down by the abrading winds, accept the touch of the moon's light, as lovely as any of us imagined, making us catch our breath suddenly by being caught up in this beauty. A tent of trees edges the fields, the ancient soil lying quiet after a season of plowing and reaping, being moved about by others, as if a soft, sensual bed were prepared for us to enter at last for some distant embrace, distant only for us, not the waiting earth the sun warmed and now lies cold. And I can see, as if a vision, when that lamp in the heavens is veiled, a dark angel comes to my room, in whose eyes is a portrait of longing that pours into my perceptions of desolation I reach for in shadows. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a retired educator whose grandparents were farmers in New Mexico. He lives now in a rural village, near to sheep farms, Amish communities, and an environmental center where bees are tended. His poems have appeared in: Ekstasis Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review and Challenge, Grey Sparrow, First Literary Review--East, The Montreal Review, and in others. ** Circles Sun eclipses pasture, dark shadows the field, covers livestock grazing; none stop to gaze up, Arial view, celestial crop circles mingle, criss-crossed lines, delineate cart paths, plow marks like scratches. Rows of bright yellow, whether tulips or daffodils, loaded wagons to market run between cow corn carts headed to silo conveyor – wheat sways, gentle rustle symphony of fragrant farm adds to late summer song. Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson writes from art, nature and prompts of memories. Her poems appear in many journals including Lothlorien, Blue Heron Review, Open Door Magazine and The Ekphrastic Review. Dickson has a BPS in Behavioral Science, has served as guest editor, sat on two poetry boards, advocates for captive elephants. She shares her home with two rescued semi-feral cats, Cam and Jojo. ** To Kelly Austin-Rolo Regarding Green Terrain How strange it seems -- the world you see -- from where we are not meant to be, and where your ingenuity intrudes on your acuity designing thus indelibly, in molten wax, fidelity to higher sense of who we are abstracting the enduring scar so geometric we impose on green terrain that we enclose denying what would else suffice as unconfining paradise for creatures unconcerned with soul or destiny in their control. Portly Bard Portly Bard: 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. ** Aerial Overviews A candle spilling from wick pool, or taper dripping while it’s lit, to fabric of batik in kind, or blocked ear treated as a child; but ‘means’, ‘meant’ words, not open minds, for blue sky thinkers, without box, or else encaustic not found out, uncovered, though, but what’s in store? It takes me to topography, to architects’ designer sheets, though colour invests action, place, a unity within this space. What shapes this stretch, both up, about, a drone to figure underground, the overview for soundings, view of plumb, dig deeper history? Both wax and wane of movements, tides, I dream allotments, footpaths, trails, haphazard growth, as stories told, the bold, as earthworks played their rôle. On common land which time refined - here shades are buried under land, of forest lawn and myrtle green - where pine, mint, pear, lime, sage, and fern. This crusty slice itself sublime as clime also in earthy spin, and like ley lines there’s mystery, in making mark, encaustic flow. Knife cutter bars imagined, swirl, or mapped contorted isobars, for whether playing part or not in how this scape is today’s plot. 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 curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com. ** Home Base Looking at the greens at our doorstep Two years above me my sister is Peering through the window on the top floor One we are. We nickname the runners Red shorts and Blue shorts Their rounds around the fields a winding wheel of Wit and fun between us Our universe One day I owned these fields. There is a picture of me in track suit Red and blue. Just hit a moon shot A face inverted into itself. Firm and ready On my way at arrival Standing at the window. Alone at night waiting for Our car to return at the far Side of the greens. Beads of light run Through the night and on to the ceiling I count them Another one, another one Another one The terrains lie dark and hollow I turn on the faucet of hope Filling them up Filling in time Stien Pijp Stien Pijp lives in the eastern part of the Netherlands amidst trees and heather. She works as a language therapist. ** The Zen of Dressmaking (iv) It will be a work of art. Misplaced tartan. Scraps of, a mini architecture. I, its sculpture. Intuit the pattern. Arrange all the pieces, lay them out. This will be a mishap of a dress. Wayward and angular, one to attract the right shade of folly. Maths won’t help you now. Secret pockets for my rune of the day, my hip flask for emergencies. Sapling green. Not my usual shade…but. The last one, viridian, didn’t do me much good. Oh, it was gorgeous, no doubt about that. Heart-stoppingly green. Like leaves after rain, touched by fingers of dusk. But it drew the wrong type, despite being delectable. Snug-hugging then flared. Untameable. This one shall be understated but all-knowing. This one shall sense you coming, your whys and wherefores. Rules? What of them? This one spits on rules of form, remakes them. Yes. This shall be that type of dress. There will be suns, a moon in half-shadow. A suggestion of light between leafy shade. There will be no exposure but revelation. Paths that lead to who-knows-where. There will be décolletage. There will be layers to peel away, petticoats, moss-green. A fresh winter sun and a morning walk. Friendly woods, equilibrium. Lungfuls of air and coming homeliness. A skyline of wisdom. You dare to learn this geometry? You have a yen for the zen of dressmaking? Then pay attention. Your lesson has begun. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, artist and avid multi-potentialite based in Birmingham, UK. She's had work published in various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Unlost Journal, Harana Poetry, Visual Verse and Sunday Mornings at the River. You can usually find her writing in her local favourite café or or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and X (Twitter): @NusraNazir. ** In Our Youth the yard was a retired cow patch, filled with green weeds and grasses, yellow buttercups and dandelions, tickling our bare feet as we fought epic battles with swords of hardwood until we’d collapse, exhausted giggles escaping sunburnt lips. Each blade of green, some browned and darkened from ancient mowing, would slice our exposed necks, pausing exuberance for an errant scratch. We’d snatch a few for harmony or taste the sour dandelion milk or blow when white replaced yellow and wonder at the seeds’ flight. We never thought of their solitude after our breath dislodged them, separated them from family and friends, spread them over long distances, not the solitude of a wind-blown seed, filled with regret, longing for home. Tony Daly Tony Daly is a Washington DC area poet and short story writer of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and military fiction/nonfiction. His work has recently been published in The Horror Zine, Lovecraftiana, and others. He recently served as guest editor for Eye to the Telescope’s Summer 2023 issue on Trauma. For a list of published work, please visit https://aldaly13.wixsite.com/website or follow him on Twitter @aldaly18. ** Crop-Marked Only look down and Medieval England lies there still. The old strips, the common land not yet enclosed the common people not yet expelled. Then there are the newer parts. The squares of enclosed fields divisive hedges the common people expelled unseen buried in time. All the crop-marks of history lying there exposed even when invisible. But those circles are revelations unexplained by history. It’s unclear now if they are new or old modern mystery making or ancient spirit visitations, fortifications, tombs, or another mystery still the crop-marks can’t tell us. 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 www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/. ** In the Last Days of the Fourth World after Joy Harjo's "A Map to the Next World" They say that a picture can speak. It can intone a poem, can sing the sweet song of holy incantation and elegy. Sometimes, the truth of the earth is too much to bear - scorched lines, marks etched and scored on red rocks like music staves, a scroll that's rolled and swirling, scattered with nature's crotchets and minims and quavers. In these last days of our world, what voice will sing verses over pure clear notes, ululations, the heart-songs of despair? We know it's over. We have abandoned the ancient wisdom, all that our ancestors learned of sun, stars, beasts, water, grass. "They have never left us; we abandoned them for science." The stars are drowned by city lights. Sun rage brings drought. Grass is tamed to pasture, beasts are unrecognisable burdens. Water makes wars, pumped from wells, corralled in irrigation canals. Whole lands are turned to patterns of criss-crossing lines. Roads and runways make a macro level like a microchip. Everything subservient to man's needs heedless of cost. What road will lead us out of our self-inflicted new wilderness? What prophet can be the oracle of hope in these end days? Will we find a way to live a better, greener life? "You must make your own map." Emily Tee Author's Note: This poem's title and the two lines in quotation marks are from Joy Harjo's poem, "A Map to the Next World.” Stave, crotchet, minim and quaver are musical terms in UK English. Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review, Blue Heron Review, Whale Road Review and elsewhere online, and in print in Poetry Scotland and several anthologies, including Ourselves in Rivers and Oceans, from The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. She lives in the UK. ** Viewing a Landscape Through Cataracts Nothing is clear, all is blurred green with blotched lights strung out like beads while every dew-drop glows at the centre of its own rainbow. We seem to be in the middle of fields and there looks to be woodland over there. I wish I could see the birds that are singing. Surgery will soon fix my eyes: these blurred colours will resolve back into shapes and meaningful things but nothing is clear for this land - any time in the future, all this greenery could be erased just by the whim of a bureaucrat's pen. Juliet Wilson Juliet Wilson is an adult education tutor, wildlife surveyor and conservation volunteer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her poetry and short stories have been widely published. She blogs at http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com and can be found @craftygreenpoet on BlueSky and Twitter. ** Some Memories are Better Left Untouched I’m falling into this conspiracy: a hint of sheet music —a melody?-- and a coffee stain (it’s not a coffee stain) the coal mine canary perches, surrounded by crop circles-- the avocado green and harvest gold of my childhood peeling linoleum stuffed animals with breath like sour cedar the crinkly paper in my fingertips, displacing musty motes-- I will pack this away, try to forget. Eileen Lawrence Eileen Lawrence is a lawyer, but please don’t hold that against her. Her poetry has been published by Dos Gatos Press, Mutabilis Press, and the Fargo Public Library. ** Green’s Not Easy It’s not easy being green. Ask Kermit. I was a mentor when all that Sesame Street fandango went public. Look where it has gotten him. I’m not saying I regret an instant of his rocket-to-stardom fame, what I am saying, and always will say, art is definitely in the eye of the observer. What you see is what you hold it to be, not perfect but with some parts laid out in sanctioned sections of your mind. Strive for the place that suits, that spells home, that makes your journey a complete picture: rolling greens or those bright/shaded, distinct ochres, yellows, muted lace. You’ll know it when your green selects its target and lies prominently among once fallow fields. life is a challenge my blueprint of life is green What colour is yours? Jane Lang Jane Lang’s work has appeared in online publications including Quill and Parchment, the Avocet, Creative Inspirations, The Ekphrastic Review, and published in several anthologies. She has written and given two chap books to family and friends in lieu of Christmas cards. Jane lives in the Pacific Northwest. ** From Here place becomes abstracted as distance grows and I’m subtracted from the composition of home. From here I see the golden shape of you and every jagged line we drew, shadows hinting at the stories left behind. From here the worst memories can be redacted, (still, I can’t forget the way I acted,) and I wonder, if despite the distance and all my resistance, can I still say I come from here? Elizabeth A. Curry Elizabeth Curry is a poet and writer. She’s also been a dancer, creative arts therapist, volunteer librarian, and taught arts-based workshops for all ages. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts where she received the Excellence in Writing Chapter Books Award. She lives in Minnesota with her family and loves being outdoors year-round, especially at dusk. ** Musica Universalis He cocked his head to one side, rested foot on shovel -- "Hear that?" I could not tell a lie; sometimes I'd hear the ocean swell of the Colorado-blues from the root twanged between gigantic thumbs, or a flute wrapped in its bunting mantle, or the bell for supper. Then however my ear fell on a mute world: September's earthy fruit (potatoes) ripen best in silence. "No -- to youth, what's always there seems nothing. As red and green go in to white, just so this blank reverberates from forest dells again in crop circles and coffee rings, down to the nucleus of the meanest cell." I like to think not all things change with time. My uncle has not worked in many years, but autumn does not stop, nor work, and I'm still pocketing these pocked, imperfect spheres. Kathryn Borobia Katy Borobia is a recent graduate of Hillsdale College. Her poems and prose have been published by Ekstasis, Glass Mountain, and several others. ** Sanctuary You forage the shores of your thought—where is the line between in and sane? Some days it feels like your mind is nothing at all but an opening, a passage for winds transforming into riptides, casting you adrift. You search for a calm stillness to float you gently towards shelter, refuge-- a place strange and beautiful-- a place to both rest and hide. Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig lives and works in NYC, where she values each parcel of green terrain. ** Frog Song They say that frogs no longer sing, that wetland patches have dried to hard stones. Here in the north, the summer sun grows meaner each year, but last night the frogs crooned in a joyful green chorus. Their songs filled the rain soaked streets, rising from the potholes and the viridescent grass. Last night I opened the door. Grooves recorded on the land for a thousand years played under stars hidden by the last stitches of the great rain. Wind raised havoc along the fringes of the mountains surrounding my home. Nothing normal anymore, but this ancient, stubborn melody. Music rises from mud in the street, from the marshland, pungent as the narcissus that scream spring, spring, spring. Last night I opened my own stubborn heart and wished a storm would strike it clean. They say all will be quiet in the extinct foreverland, the lines of earth striated with the memory of wild exhilaration. But last night the frog song was a wake of drunken canticles that lifted my own small grief. The door opened to life, the dark enveloped by green. Alethea Eason Alethea Eason has recently returned to her home in Lake County, California after a five year sojourn in New Mexico. Her poetry has appeared in El Palacio, New Mexico Poetry Anthology, and Writing in a Woman's Voice. She has written four novels, Charlotte and the Demons being the latest. She lives near a volcano with her husband, a dog and a cat. ** The Quilted Landscape She pulls from her stash the greens that are meant to be fields for baseball or sprouting corn. Some greens will be velvet forests or rough, weedy roadside growth. She finds golds that recall ripened wheat and kisses of morning sun. Touches of black and midnight blue: these will be asphalt and shadows-- or tractors turning the soil. Color determines it all. For lawns and lots she needs solids and chambrays. Plaids and stripes will be highways and driveways. In prints she sees creeks or rolling bales. Her fabrics blend vintage and new-- past and present, in harmony with her soul. Remnants and quarters will be ironed by hands that find joy in warm cotton newly pressed, then cut by fingers at home in shears and stitched by one who knows the feel of the land-- whose needle forms valleys, crags, and hills, crop circles, ridges, and level ground. What she has seen and learned flows into her work the way inspiration pours from her stash. She draws on all she has loved, because, in art as in life, one needs love to build a world. Catherine Reef Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in several online and print journals. She has published more than forty nonfiction and biographical works on subjects including Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. A graduate of Washington State University, Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York. ** On the Blue-Yellow Spectrum to Green Central Park lawns and evergreens, Cezanne and Pissarro impressions of Giverny, Key West sky as it stretches from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Jealousy, envy, and American paper money, a dead friend’s eyes before they closed. The afghan my mother crocheted for my infant son. The hospital room where he cried for his mama who was upstairs recuperating from meningitis. Demerol circles and CAT scan angles, a collage of infection and antibiotics, blue and yellow confluence to green. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner's kitchen uses the complementary colors of blue, yellow, and green. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International, Paterson Literary Review, Typehouse, Cimarron Review, Rust + Moth, and other journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. ** Cornucopia's Ghost She kept rolling and making the point for 12,000 years but now the point is that the point will soon vanish when no one is left to worship at her rotting shrines. dan smith dan smith has been widely published in print and on-line in such diverse journals as The Rhysling Anthology, Scifaikuest, Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle and Gas Station Famous. Most recently he has had poems at dadakuku, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and Cold Moon Journal. ** With Thoughts of William Blake Is this the green and pleasant land you had in mind? I wonder what you would make of this metal bird circling Heathrow, trapped and waiting to descend. My eyes glance through glass, come to rest on a patchwork quilt sewn into fields of wheat and hedgerow, threaded with yellow. I imagine the ground teeming with beetle, the sky awash with gulls swooping full throttle looping the metal coils that infiltrate the edge. For this, Mr Blake, is the Green Belt, to protect this beautiful site: it draws tighter each sunrise squeezing at life, making it hard to breathe. I observe each geometric shape and tone, an ancient woodland weaving fingerprints on soil and recoil to think of it, folded flat like a map. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. 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 is due to be published soon. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** What Do Birds Think? funny isn’t it containing the land but green is a fugitive she jumps the walls and the cornfields are envious of the sky because air is like sea slipping through a hand while birds look down and wonder Marc Brimble Marc lives in Spain and when he's not teaching English he likes drinking tea and wandering about ** Near Elkhart Under gauzy sunlight I peer over the right wing of the Cessna, gaze at a patchwork of rolling Amish farms scrolled over Indiana hillsides and valleys, white farmhouses surrounded by summer fields of corn and barley, plows pulled by a seven-horse hitch over hayfields, those verdant acres separated by crisscross county roads where gray buggies trot to farmers markets with fresh produce, colorful quilts, and baked goods-- a century-old lifestyle preserved today. Jim Brosnan Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Driving Long Distance (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019). His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales,) Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom) and forthcoming in The Wild Word (Germany). He is a full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. Jim has also won numerous awards from the National Federation of Poetry Societies (US). ** Flower Moon it is the season of hunger. the sky hangs heavy, and the earth rolls gently beneath it, rumbling with the tunneling of bees wanting for a queen. for a taste of root and nectar and fire. i am young, and have barely settled into my own wanting – when she, a sweet bear, reaches up into the blue- black night and pulls the honey moon down. i watch with awe as she drags its golden light between her fingers, low across the ground, the green terrain of a body criss- crossed with cropmarks and crocus petals. heat, peat and loam. within moments the air is filled with the smell of it – smell which is so close to taste which is so, so close to freedom. freedom, the thrill of breath so sweet and thick it sticks to the roof of a mouth. the mouth, a cave hidden away from the prying eyes of sun and society. safe haven, gasping. she gasps, sweet bear, and i catch the cavernous sound of her on my tongue. i gasp, and she splits the echo like honeycomb between her teeth. Kimberly Hall Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neurodivergent poet based in Southeast Texas, with a master's degree in behavioral science. Her work has appeared in several print anthologies, as well as in online publications such as Sappho's Torque, Equinox, and The Ekphrastic Review. She is currently working on her first collection. ** Frenzied Photosynthesis At last – the optimist aspiration atlas – a spectacle of frenzied photosynthesis, run by a cryptic pragmatist – chlorophyll, a lover of the sun, a rival of the moon, stamping its jade mark as if for fun. But despite the all-green light there are hiking rules on site if you want to reach the dreamed side: Never take the straight-branched path – it is too traveled. Never climb a tendril to the skies – it is too imagined. Never run after a sunbeam – it is too transient. Never peep over a leaf cliff – it is too ambivalent. Never look on shoots bright side – it is too blinding. Meandering tenderly-verdantly artless lose yourself in this lush-streaming paradise, spend your reason in that out-of-body experience and get hyphened to the impending miracle – blossoming – the whole point of optimist’s voyaging. Though it is bud-trapped to the last moment – you will instantly find it if you keep ambling eyes-closed but open-minded for a suddenly-flashed internally-synthesized dash. How otherwise can you heed a blooming hush? Ekateria Dukas Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems have often been hosted by The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni 2021. ** Tending The NICU hums a low tone of medical instruments and computer fans. I switch off the phototherapy bulb in my son’s incubator. He wears a miniature eye mask, a plastic tube snaked through his nostril to his stomach. Cords link his chest to machine. I unlatch and lift the fiberglass sidewall, scoop my hands underneath his warm body, gather him to my sternum. He stays asleep. I settle my sore pelvis into a wheeled chair in his corner of the ward, remove his eye mask. Bow my head to his hair and inhale. He smells sweet, intoxicates me like newly-turned earth, a fresh field to sow my heart into. His tiny fingers soft as moss, skin hued amber from early arrival. His fingerprints are a maze, a path, a map leading back to tended roots, twisting through shade and sun, plots of sweet corn, summer squash, butterbeans and brassica. The NICU doctors and interns begin their morning circuit, murmur in a cluster under the dimmed fluorescence. How-to and Don’t-do posters advise from the walls. A screen above me squiggles out vitals: oxygen, body temp, pulse. Silent numbers satisfy a nurse, who opens and closes doors, drawers, checks supply stock. Her sneakers squeak down the row of dozing infants. My son wakes, tilts his face upward. I bundle him closer. His blue eyes, deeper than sky, open wide, graze the gold-flecked forests of mine. We’re an olive branch, sweet- grass, a lemon grove, a meadow of dandelion, goldenrod, and clover. We’re a newborn continent unto ourselves. Heather Brown Barrett Heather Brown Barrett is an award-winning poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and discusses all things literary with her writer husband. She is a member of Hampton Roads Writers, where she serves on the Advisory Board and the newsletter staff. She’s also a member and regular student of The Muse Writers Center. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, Black Bough Poetry, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), and elsewhere. Visit her website https://heatherbrownbarrett.com/ ** Green Wraiths The watery green light of a languid summer evening, lingers in the silent attic, filters through the skylight onto the intestines of the house. A ladder leads up to an exit always barred and banned. Lengths of silver piping wind and coil, the sleeping serpent in its own luscious green Eden. A tall treasure chest full of dead people's secrets, faded into dusty obscurity, decaying, rotting, skeletal. Fragile playroom for mice and spiders, awaiting past owners who float like dust, motes caught in a green silence. Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher from Cambridge, UK who also taught in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in many magazines in over 15 different countries.Among her interests are art, early music, parish churches, history and landscape. ** The Three Sisters Sown in circles seen from above yellow green Maize silky elegance blades sharp tongue sweet Beans entwining social climbing azote lush Squash shady lady leafy broad earthily moist Family Planting some 6000 years & nary a rhubarb Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith taught at McGill University (Faculty of Education) for a quarter century and often had the privilege of working in First Nations and Inuit communities, where she learned the ancient wisdom of companion planting the Three Sisters. 1. Create a circular mound of rich soil 2. Plant Maize first; she grows tall, like a trellis 3. Next plant Beans; she climbs Maize, adding nitrogen to the soil 4. Third is Squash; her broad leaves shade the soil, keeping it moist. ** Spring Creed It is Spring again: green and gold glamour mirage the mundane. It is Spring again: sunshine alchemy, tree-rising sap yellow roads, emerald cities. It is Spring again: tapestry of tuning square to circle, but to bud. It is Spring again: hurrah of grasses, hallelujah of light, hymn of begin. It is Spring again: breathe in green, giddy the heart with hope. It is Spring again: turn self with earth, map the way to yes. Siobhán Mc Laughlin Siobhán Mc Laughlin is a poet and creative writing facilitator from Co. Donegal in Ireland. Her poems have appeared numerous times before in The Ekphrastic Review. Her work has also been published in a selection of journals including The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Village, The Waxed Lemon, Drawn to the Light Press and upcoming in Reverie Magazine. Twitter: @siobhan347 ** My Dark Green World There is nowhere to walk when everything is green, I’m paralyzed to turn as I remain unseen. Distant sunlight finds me like a small speck of star, I have no hand to hold but wonder where you are. Grass fills my senses as I try to calm my mind, A small step to distract how I was left behind. Voices taunt and murmur in this desolate place, As cloth-covered eyes hide the salt tears on my face. Corrie Pappas Corrie Pappas is a small business owner living outside Boston. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and she is the author of the children’s book, Come Along and Dream. ** We are a Green Palimpsest Sometimes I come splashing spreading green paint Or greener vomit I dig into the dirt fingers feel so green I sit at a table cut crepe paper make origami cranes They are fruit green parrots I see one in a cage eager to maneuver language Out of it onto the page I sit at a table making paper collages & papier mache I squat at a garden’s back corner mixing browns & greens I compost everything in my waste basket all my failed poems thrownaway salad leaves Sometimes on my fingertips there’s umami Sometimes I walk the shorelines around the green terrain Scouting out seaweeds They are so funky Green breezes from the Pacific billow in Dawn’s margin between golden & blue weaves into the tapestry I sit by a window composting light Earth comes blooming There are so few green flowers but heliotropes open under my green hedge The green roses feel unripe green in loving But the first single-cell leaf was blue-green Phytoplankton mosses ferns didn’t make gaudy kisses What would it be like to be woven into the mysterious funkiness Of a prehistoric forest I wonder when the incense was all brown & green I sit by the hearth of earth watching its greenest fire leap and leap And lick my face my eye my noseholes My hands are bleeding leaves into the earth As I sit on my haunches in my back garden digging Digging a new tapestry out every day Planting & replanting Calling nothing a weed Today the first fresh buds of the year are bursting And rain falls like unraveled crepe Behind the veil of my thirsty winter eyes All is scratchy & green I stand staring up at my yellowing ceiling my yellowing wallpaper (I know one type that stays evergreen like Amazon but I don’t want to breathe arsenic) We like to color maps with green Even where no blade of grass sneaks from concrete Even when we’ve no time or energy To plant a veggie garden on our balconies To whisper to tender green grow grow beautiful & delicious Sprout seeds scramble vine weigh us down with green marbles marvels Oh tree tree tree I got hit on the head by a gargantuan pomelo Even when we don’t want to wait till the spinach leaves are wilted The broccoli is nicely braised or roasted To add superfoods to smoothies wheatgrass kale leaves seaweeds We’d like to drink our greens I sit in scratchy city green spaces replanting uprooted weeds It takes one oak & one linden to make a wood make a myth When you read Metamorphoses the Genesis or better the Georgics Each page is a perfectly patched green terrain Lucie Chou Lucie Chou is an ecopoet hiking and gardening in mainland China. An undergraduate English major, she has work published or forthcoming in Entropy, the Black Earth Institute Blog, Tiny Seed Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, Tofu Ink Arts, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Slant: A Journal of Poetry. A debut collection, Convivial Communiverse, came from Atmosphere Press. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 project where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month. In spring 2024, she is doing exchange studies at UC Berkeley, where she explores the gay outdoors and works on a long poem that seeks to queer Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden.
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