 Bronze Horse Bit Cheekpiece, Luristan (Iran) c. 700 BCE Fire Breathing Hell Two mammoth dragons, master in-between taming, fire breathing hell. 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. ** The Year I Went Without Doing Battle There was still steam rising from the mouths of my enemy. Men who rode South until the earth had given out to the sea. A thousand dreams made to drown without reason. I’m not sure being the master of another’s life. Stirs up fire more often than grief. But either one eats at you. Means to steal whatever name the earth had drawn out of its midst. Like a loose thread. Or the soul you no longer had any need. Once you’d been ordained by the winds from up North. For there is no art to it. The dead keep reminding us. And far less craft. From the headdress to the hiss of surrender. From the first scream to its aftermath. It’s an undoing the sun would rather we didn’t have to see to. Be even figuring more. But here’s the deal. Led by two beasts on each side of me. I’ll head West. While my shadow heads East. Only one of them let up for air. Long enough to tell of it. Mark DeCarteret Poems from Mark DeCarteret’s manuscript The Year I/We Went Without have been taken by The American Poetry Review, BlazeVOX, The Ekphrastic Review, Guesthouse, Hole in the Head Review, Meat for Tea, Nixes Mate Review, Plume Literary Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal and Unbroken. ** Master of Animals Part 1 Behrooz (Better Day), simple man, farmed when he hit bronze in 1928. Not farm equipment beautiful, green-plated. Later a cheek plate for horses honed 700 BC sold to a collector quietly, paid Behrooz in rials, Said there might be more where that came from. Tongues lap. Someone spilled like tea. Academics, archeologists descend, want and plow up Behrooz’s fields. Ten years. Tenured men flew planes for signs of civilization forgotten only in a generation. How on earth? Life died by erosion or buried by dying plant life later swept aside in mountains of rain, the land of the dead disappears. A burial ground, unguarded. ** Master of Animals Part ll Horse whisperer who’s horned deity of hunt. He holds mythical beasts barehanded. Listen to the hissed fury. Master makes no move, Implacable bronze horse bit Cheekpiece has hole in solar plexus of hunter. Personal power, third chakra. Nomad, not mad, just restraining beasts at bay. Transhumance transcends bit, bronze, light, portable like the mountain people. Fleeted foot, hurried hoof following seasonal fields. To unearth buried bronze, seek spring, necropolis not far. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and What We See on Our Journeys (2021). She is published in Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Fresh Words Magazine, Spillwords, Topical Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Blue Mountain Review. Lynne stands on the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is an Editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience. Her second chapbook, Crows Fly at Midnight, will be published in 2023. ** Protected dark stallion adorned you gallant steed ride into battle no demons dare attack noble beast winged warriors open-mouths warn before battle, wear iron gargoyles feel beating heart mine too beats we ride as one beast, man – sword drawn to strike down if we fall, rest my weary head, peaceful afterlife ensured Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson advocates for captive elephants and shares her home with two rescued feral cats, Cam and JoJo. Her poems appear in various journals, including Girl God, Misfit, Deadbeat Poets and The Ekphrastic Review. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science and works with in-home seniors with Alzheimer's. She is a former coordinator for 100 Thousand Poets for Change and a past poetry board member. ** Teacher’s Peak found poem in Nietzsche’s prose What good is my happiness? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease. What good is my reason? Does it long for knowledge as the lion for its food? It is poverty and dirt and a miserable ease. It is not your sin, but your moderation that cries to heaven. Where is the lighting to leak your tongue? Where is the madness with which you should be cleansed? Man is a rope, I love those who do not know how to live, except their lives to be down-going, to be sacrifices. The time has come, I go my way, my down-going. Many, who called themselves his disciples, followed him, thus they came to a crossroad: there Zaratustra told them that from then on he wants to go alone, but his disciples handed him in farewell a staff, upon a golden haft, of which a serpent was coiled about a sun. He balanced the staff doubtful in his hands, for he disliked how gold always bestows itself; how the staff bestowed itself as a balancing act upon the shoulders of his sacrifice is a doubtful guess, for this was his last teaching etude; from then on animals’ roars backed his slopping equilibrium of infinitude. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas has studied and taught linguistics and culture at universities of Sofia, Delhi and London and authored a book on medieval art for the British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems have featured often in The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges selection, among others. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** We Know We know it was supposed to be an honour, in fact, the greatest honour we Luristan steeds could have bestowed on us, but shit, the damn thing weighed a ton. It hurt like hell, rubbing our cheeks raw. Nevertheless, we bowed and deigned to grin and bear it, for we were famous, we Niseans, sought- after by the Spartans and the engines of the chariots of the Persian kings. J.R. Solonche Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 26 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley. ** Homeward Through the Dark We gathered in the winding darkness there where six directions met beneath the swelling moon, upon the fires that danced upon the dancing dust and silver-plated hills, emblazoning our tents and huddled ovens, the rotund wombs of life that harbored warmth from each escaping breath and ravening pyre, from livid tongues of flame that joined each turning dancer to the sky. We gloried as our dark-eyed daughters birthed upon the frugal steppe an age of wonderers content to rattle reason’s numbers in the air and sit in little groups beneath the arching disk of night to contemplate the spangled whirl of rings and spheres and wonder what it meant to see them disappear within the wilderness of daylight’s sun-struck sight, to suffer past the shadow-play of night and firelight the fearful coruscating breath of noon and recognize the rasping presence of a fiery voice, that lunatic who beckons from the blinding entrance of the cave. And some would say that mind has world in it, or world has mind, yet by and by we found we’d always find the logics of disorder there, and all the while the winding sky whirls round itself out here, right here where there is somehow nothing but the turning, nothing but the shoreless river churning through the unremitting twist of time, no stable space beneath the coiling dark where worming thought might find its place and safely set its bearings. And all the while a distant starlight rumbles through the unreceptive air, across the unrelenting silences of futures past, the noise that dimly echoes only in the eye and leaves us free to picture life as we see fit, as dagger, dragon, banquet, bird or burning choir, or as a chariot of bronze we haul across the fragrant fields of night on silent wheels of fire. DB Jonas DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. Born in California in 1951, he was raised in Japan and Mexico. His work has recently appeared in Tar River, Blue Unicorn, Whistling Shade, Neologism, Consilience Journal, Poetica Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, The Deronda Review, The Decadent Review, The Amphibian, Willows Wept, Sequoia Speaks; Revue{R}évolution and others. ** Changes At first, they had a Mistress of the Animals, those Black Sea peoples, the plains and horse peoples of Asia Minor. They passed on their heritage from mother to daughter and they brought husbands into the maternal home. The Mistresses watched over their charges, offered grain and wine not blood, made whole, nurtured. The Mistress of the Animals was flanked by lionesses. Nurturing huntresses. Did the horses notice the tipping of the world when the Mistress was replaced by a Master, when the lioness guardians grew wings, talons and cruel beaks? Did they feel a change in the hands that held the reins? The plains were as wide, winters as hard, but the hands, were they as gentle? The winds that swept those antique plains swept away the tenderness. We reap the whirlwind now; horses bear heavier burdens and cruel bits. They race and jump and dance, carry children in endless circles. They obey, their eyes on the whip, noses sniffing our recycled air. There are no horse dreams in this brave new world. Poets on the shores of the world’s fringe wrote in the sands of the foaming shallows, in the stars that march across dark hill, of how the world has changed. Utterly. We snatch at the whirling debris, listen for hoofbeats. 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. ** Shaman the secret to channelling all that power is to be in the right place in your mind to let the magic flow ibex horns on my head torc round neck the griffins pour their chi through my core we make a mighty totem Emily Tee After years spent with numbers Emily Tee is now writing poetry and flash fiction. She's had pieces published in Ekphrastic Review challenges and in print with Dreich, with other work forthcoming elsewhere. She lives in England. ** Ars Bestia Domitor The urge to create is a burden we barely contain. Our thirst for control, belly hollow since the eve of birth; a bang heard when atoms shot out the eye of our horse. We need water, not droplets from our tap dancing, but an outpour that sustains. Our impulse is a wound that splits in two, the shape-shifter; our steed turns to dragons, their wings an arc to whip us, master of none, or possibly one- trick pony. We might be mad, but whatever we compose it’s an art. Maybe we are also flailing beasts, but beasts can’t tame beasts. Strength forgot- ten, toes dug in the stirrups, we ride on. Our blind horse leads us to the water, still we will not drink, the harsh bronze bit in our mouth. Heather Brown Barrett Heather Brown Barrett is a poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband, Bradley Barrett. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in Black Bough Poetry. Find her on Instagram @heatherbrownbarrett ** Indiana Jones and a Horse Bit Cheekpiece “Who do you think you are? A hatless Indiana Jones?” Elena tsk-tsked and wagged a finger at Desmond. “And at your age?” “Come on, Elena.” Desmond swiped a hand through what was left of his white hair. “What’s the harm in having a little adventure? I’m not quite ready to retire to a rocking chair and chew on a blade of grass.” “Couldn’t you take up a different hobby? Something safe and practical? Something legal? Wallpapering. Wiring. Woodworking. If you need suggestions, just ask. This old house needs work.” “Elena, you know I love you.” Desmond grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. “And I’d do almost anything you want. But really, do you expect this retired English professor to fix a leak? Surely not when we can pay someone to do it.” She regained the use of her hand and picked up the small bronze object lying on Desmond’s desk. “And what will the woman you love do when you’re hauled off to jail for stealing this...this....” “It’s a horse bit cheekpiece.” “Oh, really? And you knew that simply by looking at it?” She turned the bronze object this way and that, as if a new angle would reveal its secrets. “What horse in his right mind would prance around with that…thing in its mouth? It must hurt.” “The cheekpiece spoke to me.” “Don’t you mean it neighed at you? What did it say? ‘Steal me’?” “Very droll, dear. I’m afraid you never did have an appreciation for fine art. Around 700 B. C., a fine Persian artist slaved over it for heaven knows how long. It’s a masterpiece.” “How come last night you didn’t call my chicken Kiev a masterpiece? That’s the least you can do. I slaved over that dead chicken for hours.” “Dear, you’re missing the point. You know I love your chicken Kiev almost as much as I love you, but I can’t hang it on the wall.” “Well, you can’t hang this on the wall either. Not unless you want our first born, who, you might recall, is a police chief, to turn you into the authorities for grand theft. I assume this thing is worth a chunk of change.” Elena dropped the cheekpiece on the desk. It warbled an F sharp as it danced atop the oak desk before decrescendoing into a decidedly flat C. “If Albert hadn’t arranged for the return of the Shakespeare’s First Folio you stole--” “I prefer ‘borrowed.’” “Pilfered. Pinched. Purloined. Pick your favorite synonym. The museum had you dead to rights. Need I remind you that you weren’t wearing a mask? At least Indiana Jones had the presence of mind to wear a hat. You smiled right into the camera.” Desmond sighed. “Without Albert’s assistance. Let me restate that. Without our son’s heavily veiled threats to disclose the provenance of several of the museum’s prized possessions, you’d be in the state pen waiting for our next monthly conjugal visit.” “I love it when you employ alliteration.” “Don’t change the subject. You were able to remove this...this thing from the museum. I suggest you put that retired English professor mind of yours to good use and figure out a way to unremove it. Pronto.” “Elena, you don’t mean that.” “Oh, but I do. Did I mention I’m rereading Lysistrata?” “Oh, god, Elena. Not again.” Desmond groaned and jumped to his feet. “I just remembered I have to run uptown to do an errand.” Desmond snatched up the cheekpiece and cradled it to his bosom, In a faraway, forlorn voice, he said, “This would have been perfect over there, right next to the statue of Ishtar.” “I’ll miss you while you’re gone.” Elena bussed his cheek. “Darling, will you be back in time for dinner? I’m fixing beef Wellington.” “Beef Wellington?” Desmond sighed and studied the cheekpiece. “Oh, most definitely.” When she heard the front door close, Elena smiled and thanked her favorite author, Aristophanes. Long before that Persian artist was kicking in his mother’s belly, Aristophanes wrote a brilliant play that continues to inspire women. Just the mere mention of Lysistrata was enough to make Desmond behave. One of these days, Elena thought, I just might get around to actually reading it. Paula Messina Paula Messina writes short and long fiction, essays, and feature stories. She reads literary works in the public domain for librivox.org. When she isn't working on her novel set in Boston during World War II, she can be found strolling along the United State's first public beach. ** I Pursue Dance Lessons with My Unvaccinated Lover In the cracked-mirror room, we steer, quick and slow on the salsa floor—hole inside my stomach—and, nectar, inhale your blood orange, blonde leather, and white woods. Demons appear behind in dizziness, bronze winged, curled tails, burnt tongue-laughter, taunting my 2-3-5 & 8 roll while they squash other chickened students. The recess-lit habitat has a yield strength of taffeta: I bite the minutes, roll a mouthful, press your lovely shoulder blade the way I want love pressed into. Right left right and scariness or spaghetti awkwardness. Happiness is a horned god that centers the body. I am a nomad fighting past every past & future variant of myself. I am concerned about the unbitten Fredericksburg peaches and the hatch green chiles from our last road trip—another salsa recipe to ruin. Try to enjoy the dance without beads of sweat. Trust that a titanic array, a shimmering zenith will lead with steps to follow. John Milkereit John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press. ** Wakizashi. Walking to your house the day after you died I saw myself as a doll with arms and legs of stone protruding from a torso now a gaping maw in rictus - the wind streaming through the wet tangle of my grief. A vase of white chrysanthemums beckoned me through your loungeroom window, their petals soft with shadows from the half-drawn blinds, and I imagined Mum’s slippered footsteps sliding along kitchen vinyl, each swish echoing the sound of a swift sharp downward cut. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda is a poet living in Lake Tabourie, NSW Australia. She is just beginning her arts degree in Creative Writing. She has recently been published in three anthologies, on Viewless Wings.com, in The Ekphrastic Review, with poems forthcoming in the next edition of the Star 82 Review, right hand pointing and One Sentence Poems (OSP). Linda adores animals, family, and good champagne not necessarily in that order. ** Cheekbit From a Grave in Luristan, 700 BCE You. Your horn-crown declares your status, scares marauders, shields your horse's vision, to keep it straight, focused and true to your command. And yet ... we only found one of you? Why is it, a burial, such a holy thing, set to preserve man and beast and shield for a safe gallop into the afterlife, can so easily be raided? Neither your snake gods nor your devil's tails nor your beast-like human head can deter the ragged grave-digger, eternally electrified by greed. Anita Jawary Anita Jawary is a Melbourne artist, writer and poet. She waits for spring, and writes. ** Bridle A barren field, dirt-clod Rock-strewn, root-twisted Brats at the table, bawling. I offer a prayer to overcome. It is an impossible task. There is no other way but to go on The bare table gleams The dull morning beckons Each muscle in my body aches Wishes to lie entombed in clay. With a cacophony of children crying I can no longer dream of shifting this yoke So I ask the impossible Yoke monsters to my horse’s bridle: First the alchemy of the crucible Then the careful anvil work calling forth Griffons, dragons and me With horns on my helmet! Between the soft lips of my poor nag This magic bridle. So she must, at all costs, Cost to her gentle quivering lips Pull my plough Feed my family. Lucie Payne Lucie is a retired Librarian who is fascinated by ekphrastic challenges and is writing as much as she can. ** The Red Horse Louisa On a sunny summer day, I almost caused my father’s death in the old fenced lumberyard a photographer taking black and white pictures father holding the bridle of his red horse Louisa. I am holding father’s hand, skipping to his side I want to be in the photo pigtailed Magyar refugee girl. I pick up a horsewhip standing behind the mare father receives a rear kick steel hooves striking his chest father does not fall to the ground so I could hug him back to life he does not beat me with a rubber baton the sun continues shining, but four decades later oh I want to hug father again in his coffin, my little apu. River town Donaustauf, by the Danube Bavarian Forest chalk hills ridge on a sunny summer day, remember that day in the Baracke my brother József is born, a boy after four girls and I am a tomboy helping father feed three horses but father forgets me a small photo in the sunshine. Ilona Martonfi Ilona Martonfi is a mother, an activist, an educator, literary curator, poet and an editor. Born in Budapest, Hungary, she has also lived in Austria and Germany. Martonfi writes in seven chapbooks, journals across North America and abroad. Curator of the Argo Bookshop Reading Series. Recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2010 Community Award. Martonfi lives in Montreal, Canada. The Tempest, Inanna Publications, spring 2022, is her fifth poetry book. ** The Warrior-Poet of Luristan Consider the Farmer. When his field yielded an ancient crop of bronze, did he stand in awe in the middle of the row, turning the bit cheekpiece in his hands? An artifact of such deft craftsmanship, Master of Animals holding the reigns of two chimera-- part bird, part ibex—one balanced on a hare, the other on a fish. Or did silver dance in his eyes as he rushed to market? It was the 1920s. But step back some millennia. Consider the Rider. Perhaps a Mede or a nomadic Cimmerian from southern Russia or a Kassite. A man considered cultured for his time. Perhaps he was a warrior-poet like Lu Chi in second-century China, or a chronicler like Homer. Perhaps he told the struggles and suffering of his clan around campfires. And when he set the sacred bronze, the Master of Animals in his horse’s mouth, what bit did he clench in his own as the last crisis brought him to his knees? When he thundered across frosted fields into battle. When he dragged himself back weeks, maybe months, later to his river-home. When he found his people scattered, now bones in a fallow field. Did he weep, cry out his grief to the Master, to the animals, to the bit he had thought blessed? Did he feel deserted, suffer a loss of faith? Or did he reach deep into his pain and begin to gather words of mourning and war, knowing to suffer would always be man’s fate? Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg’s poetry has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. She is a dedicated contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, which has honored her with one of its Fantastic Ekphrastic Awards. She has contributed to the Review’s Throwback Thursday and is currently the guest judge of the Jo Zider Challenge, https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/ekphrastic-writing-challenge-jo-zider-with-guest-editor-sandi-stromberg.  Join our Art of Tarot contest! Click here or on image above for details. Be inspired by a selection of curated images on the theme. Write flash fiction of poetry. Win prestige and cash prizes! Special guest judges Riham Adly and Roula-Maria Dib.
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