The Ekphrastic Review is thrilled to have the incredible Alexis Rhone Fancher as this challenge's guest editor and artist! A big welcome to Alexis, who is known for her widely published photography and for many amazing books, including Erotic, The Dead Kid Poems, Enter Here, Brazen, Junkie Wife, and more. You can visit her site here: https://www.alexisrhonefancher.com/.

**

Dear Ekphrastic Readers and Writers,

I have long been a fool for ekphrastic poems. Some visual artists are adept at creating art that allows the viewer to enter the art, make themselves a part of it and then write about it. Such works of art tease me, even dare me to step inside. Edward Hopper is one such artist. So much empty space in his canvases. Leonora Carrington is another painter who dazzles me. And occasionally, a photograph of mine seems to tempt me as well, which led me to create DUETS, a collaboration between myself and my long-time editing/creating partner, poet Cynthia Atkins. We wrote to my photos over a one-year period, and realized we had a book, which was published in 2022, by Harbor Editions.

It’s always a pleasure to be published in The Ekphrastic Review. Over the past few years they’ve published several of my ekphrastic poems. I’m a poet, writer, art lover and also a photographer, and there’s so much convergence in these pages that speaks to me. I’m delighted to be a guest editor with my own photo, one which I hope will invite you to enter my desert landscape, and then write about your journey. I look forward to reading your poems and stories.

Alexis Rhone Fancher

**

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

The prompt this time is Deserted Highway, Mojave Desert, by Alexis Rhone Fancher. Deadline is February 28, 2025. 

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​ Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD).

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include FANCHER CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, February 28, 2025.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 

12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 

13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
​
​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
​

​Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

The prompt this time is Untitled, by Manolo Millares. Deadline is February 14, 2025. 

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​ Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD).

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include MILLARES CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, February 14, 2025.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 

12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 

13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
​
​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.

Missed?

But there is life, means to survive.
amongst the strife of shallow graves,
where rock and masonry conjoin
to wipe from earth that little hope.
But some adapted, little root,
a guard, a carbon-capture cloud,
to hold their ground, in fortress stance,
that bulwark worn down by the rain,
drips infinite in time on place,
a torture for impregnable.

Remember well, in savage war,
the weakest triumphs in thin soil,
despite colossal taking toll,
the mighty brought down, haughty fall.
It’s hard to see where both obtain -
that massive block, as solid wall,
the whelm that hefts the lonely tree;
but so with mist that fogs our view,
for veil of tears (no vale in site),
distracts from hope, surmounting scape.

So celebrate each single tree,
a sign and symbol, history;
from mycorrhiza, canopy,
all evergreen in darkest earth.
Recall their seed needs stratify,
be frozen before germinates.
But forget not, while justice slow,
when mass knows force, then moment known,
as crib lies under rubble strewn,
may we encourage gracious, kind?
 
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 online 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
 
**
 
Precipice 
 
uneven border
of crumbling 
rock, sharp
silver cut into 
mist -- here 
at the brink,
unbound 
 
Elanur Williams
 
Elanur Williams is a GED teacher in the Bronx. She lives in New York with her husband and daughter. 
 
**
 
The Choice
 
“Don’t look back.” Isn’t that what was said to Lot’s wife? But she looked, and we all know her fate. Does her pillar still stand? Unlikely. The ravages of time would have taken care of mere salt.
 
Despite the warning, I, too, look back to a place where the deeds are done, the shadows are banished, and there is nothing to fear. I’m tempted to stay here gazing into the past for the rest of eternity, living easily amidst my memories of beautiful days while banishing anything with a darker hue. Would a pillar of salt be such a terrible fate?
 
A tremulous whisper interrupts my reverie. “I’m here.”
 
I slowly turn my head. Who is here? What do they want with me? The bearer of the voice is lost in a sea of mist and swirls. I take a tentative step forward, arms outstretched, grasping at wisps of emptiness. My toes curl over an edge. A precipice. What lies beyond?
 
The choice is clear. The past in its permanence or the future in its possibilities? A statue or living, breathing, creating?
 
I leap, leaving the salt behind.
 
Teri M. Brown
 
Teri M. Brown, mother, grandmother, beach bum, bridge player, cyclist, award-winning author, and Online for Authors podcast host, calls the North Carolina coast home. Teri’s novels, Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, Daughters of Green Mountain Gap, and An Enemy Like Me introduce readers to characters they’d like to invite to lunch. Follow her at www.terimbrown.com.
 
**

Conundrum
 
Fog uncomforts fear
in wild beauty admired 
from unmoving safety
anchored to rock, a tiny 
gully enclosing the body 
from edges and certain 
death from accidental fall 
or impulsive leap, flight.
 
And yet in imagination, 
I navigate to the edge
stand firm with arms
embracing wind, fog, 
dawning sun, feet young 
wholly unbothered 
by jagged edges 
and uneven stance.
I look down, undizzy. 
I fill my lungs.
 
Carol Coven Grannick
 
Carol Coven Grannick is a poet and children’s author whose work captures her response to, and relationship with the earth’s natural objects, imprints, creatures, and experiences. She delights in writing for little ones and for the rest of us. Her work in numerous children's and literary magazines gives meaning to the tender journey through this life. She can be reached through her website: https://bitsoftheworldinverse.com
 
**
 
The Precipice Calls
 
The edge had dared us.
The pull that flesh exerts
this season feels suspended.
For days the rain sheeted,
damping the cold dirt.
Dry and dormant things
gasped for air underground
in tunnels running near
and around buried stones.
A line of leafless trees
swayed at a meadow's edge;
a field of pale grass
lies flat in shearing winds,
a low, hollow lallation
against a stinging silence
that smothers human sounds.
Cold to the touch, this land
of immense disappearances,
where dusk had stalled
and squeezed breath from the sky,
encompasses us, alone
together, turning our senses,
the broken bits we use
to know ourselves, the raw
force, tight as a bud,
we feel will burst out
in full, seducing flowers,
sprung alive from our bodies
to wreck the world we made.
 
Royal Rhodes
 
Royal Rhodes is a poet and retired educator who taught global religions for almost forty years. He lives now in a small village in rural Ohio.
 
**
 
Life on the Precipice
 
Overhead I hear kak-kak-kak—a peregrine falcon
hunting lunch in the crevices of granite
below me, in the distant valley, I see shadow
and sunlight. Night was just stepping aside
when I began this climb, and now, sweat-slicked
and aching, hunger hangs on the breeze
and the fog-chill envelops me. The wool
in my head has unraveled onto subalpine scrub
and the whitebark pine holds its breath. Up here,
I can be nothing but what I am—an edge-walker,
heart-stomped and empty-handed. Damp air clings,
my nostrils tingle, I can almost taste spring.
I wonder what would happen if
I floated right off the bluff.
 
Lesley Rogers Hobbs
 
Lesley Rogers Hobbs (she/her) is an Irish poet and artist living in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and service dog. She loves popcorn, sunshine, Pink Floyd and the ocean. Her poetry has appeared online and in print, including in The Ekphrastic Review, Open Door Poetry, The Hyacinth Review, Querencia Press and Cirque.
 
**
 
No Time to Worry, No Time to Blink
 
Life on a precipice sure is sweet.
No time to worry, no time to blink.
Grip onto something till your hands are no longer pink.
Else you might not make it across the street.
 
Life isn't a pillow fight fought to defeat.
It is sitting on the edge, a moment from survival or death.
And marching forward, cherishing each breath. 
Lying next to someone close with a shared latent heat.
 
Living a little wild, forgetting any or all conceit 
Discarding these many lies and being ever-present
It sure beats worrying about what to circumvent. 
Especially when it's truly captivating or bittersweet.
 
Tomorrow and yesterday do not even exist. 
If that's where you're at and hope to reside 
You will never really live or thrive. 
You will only somehow, devoid of happiness, subsist.
 
Mark Andrew Heathcote
 
Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. His poems have been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed.
 
**
 
Silver, Silver, Not Yet Gold

Silver, silver, not yet gold
sculpts the land:
frost and all that could be cold
 
Ebbing swifter than sea
like a strand of wavering silk:
Silver, silver, not yet gold.
 
Between dream and drug,
form and figure:
frost and all that could be cold
 
Where purgatory held infernos
that bow at once before those of hell:
Silver, silver, not yet gold
 
Daymare was too weak a word
yet with less might than hate:
frost and all that could be cold
 
The sensation in which fog partakes - collides
contrary to an oak, alive:
Silver, silver, not yet gold
Frost and all that could be cold
 
Jenna Chebaro
 
**

Haibun from a Cliff’s Edge​

It is not truly the desire to fall which captures the senses here. More the weight. The weight of breadth, and breath under pressure. The wind, which withers and turns deadly, weathering stone and bone alike. Air and void whisper across the heavy fog, cloud-sweet. Heady. Beckoning. Moisture crawls downward like darkened fingers, curling, cupping the open cliffside in its slick, dewy palm – and it would be so easy to slip. It would be so easy to slide low into apathy. Do nothing. Watch as gravity takes its due – as the earth turns up roots and the sky tears down branches, bends spines, crumbles hands and peaks under feet – it would be so easy, and yet – and yet –
 
steady arms stretch through
deepening gloom – within reach,
new dawn’s tender light

Kimberly Hall

Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neurodivergent poet based in Southeast Texas. She holds degrees in psychology and behavioral science. Her debut poetry collection, Honey Locust, was published in 2024 by hotpoet, and is available through them (here) or through communication with the poet (here).

**
 
Rooted in Resilience
 
Body:
A twisted trunk against the granite face,
A testament to life in barren lands,
Where roots cling tight, defying time and space,
And branches reach towards the sky's demands.
 
He stands like that lone tree, weathered, bold,
A soul that's known the storms of doubt and fear,
Yet found his footing, stories yet untold,
A heart that beats with strength, year after year.
 
His mind, a kaleidoscope of shifting hues,
Reflects the beauty of a world unseen,
Where patterns form, and dreams begin to fuse,
And fragile roots find strength in what has been.
 
He stands, a testament to life's embrace,
A soul that thrives in this precarious space.
 
Trent Shafer
 
Trent is a writer, artist, and social impact technologist with a "kaleidoscope mind." He explores the world through a unique lens, weaving together personal narratives, social commentary, and a touch of the surreal. His work celebrates the beauty of difference, the power of human connection, and the resilience of the human spirit.
 
**
 
Sunday in the Park with Franka
 
Franka,
Why is it you always get to stand on sure ground
While I have to live on the edge
Hello, Franka
There’s a being on this ledge
 
A droplet of sweat
The top of a leaf
She always does this
Can you make this brief
Sunday in the park with Franka
One more Su–
The crown is wide
Beginning to sway
The branches giving
I won’t let them splay
Who was at the sea Franka
Who was at the sea
The gulls and who Franka
The gulls and who 
 
Don't move
 
Lara Dolphin
 
A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mom of four amazing kids. Her chapbooks include In Search Of The Wondrous Whole (Alien Buddha Press), Chronicle Of Lost Moments (Dancing Girl Press), and At Last a Valley (Blue Jade Press).  
 
**
 
Inkblot Images
                                           
"Pareidolia:  active pattern of perceiving objects, shapes or scenery as meaningful things in the observer's experience.”
from a computer definition of Rorschach
 
 
     Fog fell like a bridal veil    over a granite glacier,
     the stone like a natural sculpture --   a platform
 
     for a single tree    with a somewhat amorphous shape
     sitting beneath it; a form    that could have been a gypsy
 
     marman, seated, holding a child    who reached up
     to touch her nose;    or it could have been someone in
 
     costume, a tourist     who'd climbed the rock face
     rising above his simple beginnings    in a Swiss village.
 
     Misty liked to think of scenes    as a creation myth,
     a granite formation    that began with ice and snow, a glacial
 
     event fallen from the heavens     related to eternity
     no less real if it happens to a grain of dust    instead of
 
     to a star    a thousand times greater than our sun...
     Just looking at the fog-shrouded precipice    in the picture
 
     of Yosemite made Misty    think her name, Misty,
     should  rhyme with dizzy;    Way to go with Vertigo --  If
 
     there were sound, would it be a yodel?    She sat, silent,
     in her therapist's waiting room    as cows the color of butter-
 
     milk    (cream turning brown as the calves grew up)
     were draped with flowers.    They reminded her of the climb
 
     up Yankee Boy Basin     to a clear pond -- like a mirror
     in a landscape with alpine flowers.    She'd been freezing that day,
 
     so cold she'd borrowed    a little boy's wooly hat
     and pulled it over her ears.    Remembering that child,
 
     she wondered if that was why    the figure under the tree
     in the photograph     looked human, though it may have been
 
     a small mound of stones.     Did she want those stones
     to mean life, beneath that single tree --   life with the courage
 
     to grow so near the edge of reality --    the precipice 
     of marriage where wind-force    might blow all of it away
 
     into the valley of Yosemite?    Wasn't that rock
     a rather precarious place     to imagine a Destination Wedding? 
 
     If so, where were her Swiss bridesmaids?    The guests?    
     The groomsmen?  The Groom?    & where on earth had the figure
 
     beneath the tree gotten a baby?    Had the story appeared
     like inkblot Rorschach images     (the same pictures, different
 
     meanings every visit?)     visions that became
     more bizarre after her therapist     fell asleep for $225 an hour;
 
     maybe she'd wake up, jealous    if she wasn't invited
     to the wedding!    She, herself, might not be there after they said
 
     their vows --     a leap of faith.  The session would begin
     with the usual question:    "Where were we, where are we now,
 
     and where are we going?     Swiss cow bells made
     a soft clunking sound     as Misty felt for a Swiss chocolate
 
     in the pocket     of her gypsy-wedding drindl.
    (She'd added rhinestones     shining on the fitted bodice
 
     like stars --    sparkling thoughts of marital bliss --
     Halfway to Heaven.)    The camera lens had caught the sides
 
     of the Half Dome stone --    smooth and sculpted
     and satiny in Gabler's picture.    Thinking of the  photographer --
 
      her name -- Misty's thoughts     drifted  to Hedda
      Gabler     Ibsen's unhappy young married protagonist --
 
      did something about those rocks      mean the danger
      of falling in love?      The therapist was taking a call (on Misty's
 
      time)     so Misty focused, for meaning, on childhood
      abandonment.    She remembered the story of Heidi, a little
 
      orphan girl     who lived with her grandfather --
      her Opa -- in the Swiss Alps.    The fog, soft as cloud-fluff
 
      ringed the rocks in a photograph    where nature
      defied reality.    Misty sat, wondering how to assimilate
 
      the meaning of the inkblot images    as Heidi's Opa
      said that it was time     to take the animals down the hill -- 
 
      to take them home.    He stooped, standing near
      his granddaughter as he spoke    so her cheek was brushed
 
      by his white beard.    It was soft as cotton --
      and soft as a bridal veil of fog
                                                           a scene where the permanence
     of stone
                        means the possibility of change --
                                                                                        a remedy at Yosemite.
 
Laurie Newendorp
 
Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. Honoured by acceptances to the ekphrastic challenges and nominated for Best of the Net, her book, When Dreams Were Poems, explores the relationship of art to life and poetry. Marman means "mother" in German-Swiss. A drindl for a girl and lederhosen for a boy was traditional dress for Swiss, Germans and Bavarians.  The quote about eternity in a grain of dust is from Margo Bennet’s The Wife of Bath.
                                                                                
**
 
Vantage Point
 
I am an embassy managing failed expectations.  I keep a quiet heart on the precipice.   Caution has its price, and I have stayed gone, for the most part. I miss the dog who died with his eyes wide open. To minimize doubt, I lift the slap he lays under once in a blue moon, like the  lawless woman that I am. There is a parasitic nature to those who are unprepared to be loved, and I know there will come a time when my feet will no longer be needed to bear my weight. I will have a gaping mouth. The world will barely skip a beat. How long should a prayer last, anyway? The palm frondsare growing stealth and sturdy against the ancient and cracked seawall, which is stoking all of my superstitious tendencies. I have read all the signs. The corpse of a star still pulses and though it is gasping and weak, its strength is in its negative potential. The sutures are jagged and they leave a scare. I am up off the floor and into the light. It is a parabolic moment and there is a new story to tell. You can't trod the earth broken-hearted forever.
 
Michelle Reale
 
Michelle Reale is a poet and scholar, living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She is the author ofseveral poetry collections including In the Year of Hurricane Agnes (Alien Buddha Press, 2022)and the forthcoming Let it be Extravagant (Bordighera Press, 2025). She teaches poetry in the MFA program
at Arcadia University.
 
**
 
What Exists / Lets Itself Be Encountered
 
You stand at the brink of divinity.  Infinitude envelops you.  You whisper a makeshift prayer, send it out across the giant breaths.  What to do when you reach the precipice but become ever-present?  
 
Your search for godliness led you here.  You stand in the thick of it.  A lone tree for company.  Facing yourself in the great surround, you merge and become.  Stupefied by photons.  Element and force.  You lean in and shed yourself.
 
The geometry of falling.  The fathomless space.  Flight and gravity.  Oh, how the abyss is seductive.  You would walk right into it if you weren’t so utterly material.  Instead, you breathe it in, knowing you could disappear into its arms and never be seen again.  
 
Nina Nazir
 
Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, writer and artist based in Birmingham, UK. She has been widely published online and in print. She is also a Room 204 writer with Writing West Midlands. You can usually find her with her nose in a book, writing in her local favourite café, or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir. 
 
**
 
Slip Slidin’ Away
 
the hospice walls are polyethene
everything I see is clouded
in shrouds of opaque fluid –
tubes   drips   canula clips
 
Paul Simon’s lyric slices
through silence that hangs –
the nearer your destination
the more you’re slip slidin’ away
 
yesterday   befuddled in fog
a rare moment of clarity
a childhood memory –
a bag of Fox’s Glacier Mints
 
we’re sucking transparency
feeling the spill of solidity
sink into slithers on tongues
for the sheer joy of it
 
I sense you slipping now
skimming the face of ice
no purchase on precipice –
tasting the thrum of that song
 
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 pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter@Kateyoung12poet or on her website: kateyoungpoet.co.uk
 
**
 
To Franka M. Gabler Regarding Life on the Precipice 1
 
The magic of your misted ledge
and life that clings to lethal edge
is in the blur at first to eyes
that drawing closer realize
 
the clarity is merely veiled
where time has etched to be regaled
the stubborn will of battered stone
and scattered seed that fate has sown
 
to be survival carving crest
now beauty of its struggle blessed
to be the shade and resting place
for other life that it will grace
 
as lesson to the fervent gaze
that sees beneath translucent haze.
 
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.
 
**
 
Two Trees
 
like the Pieta
enveloped
 
in the thick fog
of wars
 
as countless mothers
mourn
 
we silent
on a windswept peak
surmise
what Gazan, what Ukranian, what Syrian
what untold others
might have risen
to save us
compose
sing
paint 
live 
less desolate 
less inconsolable
than we who remain
in this landscape
 
This Golgotha
of two trees 
 
dan smith
 
dan smith is the author of Crooked River and The Liquid of Her Skin, the Suns of Her Eyes. He has been widely published in journals as diverse as The Rhysling Anthology, Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle, Sein und Werden, Jerry Jazz Musician and Gas Station Famous. Nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize, his most recent poems have been at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, dadakuku, Rattle Prompt Challenge,The Ekphrastic Review, tsuri-doro, Sense and Sensibility and The Solitary Daisy.
 
**
 
The Lone Tree
 
wakes up, at dawn’s first touch
parting the silken curtains of mist,
to feel the velvet warmth of the sun on her skin.
The music of the breeze cradles her leaves,
while she stands witness to the winter of stillness,
the shadow of summer, in the chasm
between the familiar and the unfamiliar,
never once complaining, not once grumbling,
but rooted gracefully in the present -
stretching her arms to reach for the skies of hope,
while counting her blessings, each second
of her life on the precipice.
 
Preeth Ganapathy
 
Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published or are appearing in several magazines such as Braided Way, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and various other journals. Her microchaps, A Single Moment, and Purple have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for the 2023 Best Spiritual Literature.
 
**
 
Somewhere, a Heron
 
My sight stills on a sliver
of world I’ve not yet seen,
nor likely ever will:
 
a slice of Yosemite, frozen
by your lens and chiselled
to an ice tooth.
 
Breath - this ancient mist -
wets my lip and
condenses there in
 
beads of silver, or
crystal crumbs of mint;
a glacier to lick.
 
I’m lost in your ghost-grey.
Knuckle up folded rock, climb
a tin foil tree to seek
 
the heron who, day by day,
greets me in silence
its eye affixed
 
to the river by my home.
Slow stirrer of shallows, its bob
disquiets the valley. Then skyward
 
like fine art, wings shivering the air.
Your camera. Quick!
A tether for my heart.
 
Vanessa Crannis
 
Vanessa writes mainly, but would love to expand her collection of poetry. She is very happy to have been published and short-listed a few times, including in The Ekphrastic Review's Tickled Pink contest. Vanessa is happiest out-of-doors and runs or swims every day. She is training for a second marathon and planning a triathlon. This year, she hopes to re-start her interest in recording UK moths, curious about any writing that might emerge. A late starter, Vanessa is also on the look out for old vinyls, and discovering whether music might move her as much as words. 
 
**

Standing Tall
 
This fog cannot hide
that cliff as it sweeps
closer and closer.
 
My roots have started
touching air, not stone--
 
nothing I can clutch.
One day I will lose
my hold, and topple.
 
But now, I stand tall.
Now, my branches stretch.
 
Now, I drink the mist.
 
Gary S. Rosin
 
Gary S. Rosin’s work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net, and has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press 2023), Cold Moon Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Texas Poetry Assignment, Texas Seniors (Lamar Literary Press), The Ekphrastic Review, Verse Virtual, and elsewhere. He is a Contributing Editor of MacQueen’s Quinterly. He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing 1990), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum 2008)(offprint).
 
**
 
Shadows That Follow
 
as I stand atop
a place perfect
in times of love and loss-
in shared silence
of abandoned squishy ghost,
half-eaten bourbons, the unopened
50-50 classic sweet and salty
missing the carry-on.
In wrappers that housed tattoos and stickers,
hooked labels of baby puppets,
Elsa & Anna’s friendly world.
In shiny threads twirling my hairbrush.
 
The truth lies heavy
in cracked mist-
meeting last light in gentle wind
by the trees.
Love lives still
in luminous grey,
in conversations, in smell of coffee
over the scent.
In rising voice of the womb,
a witness to decades of hollow,
a voyage as yet barren.
 
Abha Das Sarma
 
An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. 
 
**
 
I Teeter at the Precipice of Prednisone
 
The treatment for my autoimmune skin disease encases me within swollen body and useless limbs. My watery eye-slits cannot judge distance, slope, or risk. My daily existence becomes a navigation of fossilized gray glacier. If only I could throw a grappling hook, let its rope catch a solid foothold to steady myself, believe that I could master my destiny. But I am frozen in this no man’s land, locked in a mindset of weakness.
 
Barbara Krasner
 
Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse. Her work has also been featured in The Ekphrastic Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Paterson Literary Review, and other journals. Visit her website at barbarakrasner.com.
 
**
 
From Pebble and Seed
 
Are those monuments in the deep distance?
 
If so, why shroud them in fog?
 
I’m sure you have your reasons.
 
~
 
The fog is certain it blocks your view,
but all it really does
is arouse your curiosity
until you’re sure it is not hiding
some suffering thing.
 
~
 
One massive cliff face upon another.
 
Think of the pain of bone on bone,
of the vanished disc
 
a spine growing shorter
and thinner
and gravely more sheer
 
~
 
the saddest has already happened
 
why keep the monuments secreted
 
why place a tree where no other trees can grow?
 
~
 
find what is redeeming
 
no matter how far they descend
the simple colors
are still tender
 
~
 
imagine hanging from your fingertips
from the nexus
the way we hang from days
some of us believing
that if we hang long enough
 
we’ll never fall
 
~
 
oh maker of things
colossal and infinitesimal
 
how will I ever know which is which
just by watching
 
do I not need scent
touch perceiving
 
fear?
 
~
 
the aged bluff recollects its pebble days as the tree remembers sprouting
 
~
 
consider beyond the fog or risk being lifeless

John L Stanizzi
 
Author of 15 books, including - Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Chants, POND, SEE, Hallelujah Time, and others. Besides The Ekphrastic Review, Johnnie is widely published - including Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River, and others. Creative Non-Fiction found in Literature & Belief, Potato Soup, After the Pause, and others. Creative Non Fiction Fellowship 2021 - Connecticut Dept. of Arts, Culture, and Diversity - a former New England Poet of the Year - Etherington Scholar - Wesleyan University - most recently he was awarded first place in The Ekphrastic Review’s Ekphrastic Marathon. Newest book, Entra La Notte, due in March 2025. Retired Lit. Prof. Manchester Comm. College – also taught English and was theatre director, Bacon Academy. https://www.johnlstanizzi.com
 
**


Don't Pine For Me 
 
When 
but a sapling 
my mother tree
soughed to me:
Girl
don't you go
planting seeds 
on the precipice!
 
Don't tell me
where to 
germinate!
I barked 
 
Now 
some centuries 
gone
my lover who 
might have been 
blown
by the wind 
leaves me
naughty 
with desire 
oh
so high 
on the scarp
 
Donna-Lee Smith
 
Donna-Lee Smith, an abstract photographer, at times writes from Gotland Island where Viking souls frolic on the mist.
 
**
 
Alone on the Precipice 
 
When visited in a hundred years
by children of the eons
 
the precipice tree will be
rooted as it is now
 
it will bend in freezing winds
blanketed by snow and ice
 
it will look from its small perch
down the deep facade
 
it will exist as it does 
not knowing what existence is
 
it will stand alone like it was when
seen by the eyes of ancient nomads
 
or posed on the precipice
captured by a photographers lens
 
not knowing the beauty of its curve
or how it grew alone from rock
 
the twist and tangle of its limbs
that feel the solitary wisp of clouds.
 
Daniel W. Brown
 
Daniel W. Brown began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. world. Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, and he has hosted a youtube channel Poetry From Shooks Pond. He was also included in MId-Hudson's Arts Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23 and writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination.
 
**
 
Men of the Cliff
 
Mist covers the foreground 
hiding away the smaller edges and scratches of the cliff.
 
The cliff itself forms disturbingly straight,
the edge standing like a proud man.
Tufts of snowy hair grow slowly on the shoulders while
a singular tree juts upwards on the rocky top, like an evergreen ponytail.
Stony arches with sprinkled snow are seen in the distance
resembling raised shoulders of other men with matching confidence.
 
The mist is a palette of grayscale 
spanning from bliss to abyss like colored air.
 
White angels guard the bright sky, glaring down
at the ashen hell beneath
its wraith-like monsters cropped away by Gabler’s composition.
 
In the midst of the tension
the man and his friends in the distance
stand haughtily and gaze ahead
unaware of the two cliques that vie for them.
 
Matthew Liu
 
Matthew Liu is a high school student dreaming of a WWII historical fiction idea to publicize someday, currently residing in the United States.
 
**
 
Growing Up
 
A seed was excreted by a passing bird and deposited on the top of a high cliff. Even though exposed to the elements, it dared to stretch forth a tiny white root which sought a foothold and sustenance. Mist and dew brought water which, with the goodness left in the bird dropping, were enough to give it strength to explore a tiny crack in the rock. As it grew, the root felt its way along, absorbing the nutrients left behind by the algae and lichen that lived up there. Thus encouraged, a tiny shoot of green emerged from the other side of the seed. It followed the sun and bent with the pressure of wind currents eddying around the uneven cliffs. As it waved in the wind, its stem thickened and strengthened, and the roots - for the first root was now not alone - burrowed further and split the rock into shards which over the years rain and snow froze and thawed and broke into fragments, then particles, then into a fine life-giving soil which was quickly inhabited by insects. The tree, for that is what it was, grew strong, put forth branches and leaves until one day a tiny yellow blossom appeared, followed by another and another till the tree was laden with them. The winds that year though were strong and blew off the petals, as they did the next year when the tree blossomed again. The third year however, the winds were light and a bee, caught on a zephyr, was blown up to the rock. It needed to collect pollen and nectar to make honey for the winter so it smeared the powdery grains with a little of the nectar and gummed these pellets to its legs. It was difficult doing this using only its feet so some pollen ended up being caught in its fur and this the bee inadvertently brushed onto the anthers of the next flower when it dived into one tempting nectary after another. When it could barely hold itself up with the weight of the grains, the bee launched itself off the branch and flew back to its hive leaving behind flowers which later swelled into berries. Much of the fruit rotted during the autumn rains; some fell on the rock and rolled off, falling to the ground far below; others were eaten by grateful passing birds, but two fell onto the tiny patch of soil and put forth slim roots which burrowed into the new earth. As the years passed, the saplings grew tough and resilient alongside their parent and in their turn were able to spread seeds on the rock until one day the whole of the rock was covered with trees and birds and insects and thrived with life and song.
 
A seed can grow shoots
Which despite adversity
Become a forest
 
Alison R Reed
 
Alison R Reed has been writing for many years, but only came to poetry some seven years ago. She won the 2020 Writers Bureau Poetry competition and has been published both online and in various anthologies. She enjoys experimenting with different forms of poetry and particularly enjoys Ekphrasis. She has been secretary of Walsall Writers’ Circle for more years than she would like to say!
 
**
 
Liminal
 
This mist is stone.  This stone is mist.
And I persist.  And I persist.
 
How long a time shall I survive?
I am alone.  I am alive.
 
This white is grey.  This grey is white.
I match the water with the light.
 
I know my roots, how deep they are.
How far is down?  How down is far?
 
How dry is cold?  How wet is dry?
I am this one.  This one is I.
 
I match the silence with the spray.
This grey is white.  This white is grey.
 
How long a lifetime have I grown?
I am alive.  I am alone.
 
This stone is mist.  This mist is stone.
This mist is stone.  This mist is stone.
 
Ruth S. Baker 
 
Ruth S. Baker has published in a few online poetry magazines.  She has a particular love for animals and visual art.
 
**
 
The Tree 

“On a misty mountain top where the sky showed no sign of blues, a single tree stood at the edge of a great precipice. It had not always been alone. Once it had been part of a dense forest crowded with several trees just like itself. But over the years, the others had fallen or been uprooted by storms, leaving the solitary figure to face the vastness alone.

The tree wasn’t the tallest or strongest but was stubborn. It had persistence that kept it firmly rooted when others swayed and toppled during fierce winter snowstorms. Its branches were crooked and reaching, almost as if it was trying to embrace something out of its grasp, perhaps the sky, the stars, or perhaps the sense of belonging it had no longer remembered. 

In its earlier days, the tree had longed for the companionship of other trees. It missed the chorus of rustling leaves, the chatter of birds, the hum of the forest. But as time passed, the tree’s yearning faded. It learned to find comfort in the stillness, to appreciate the quiet moments the world offered. From its place on the precipice, it could see the world below—vast valleys, winding rivers, and forests stretching out in every direction. Each moment was a gift, the changing light, the shifting clouds, the cool winds that danced around it,” said Mary, as she sat beside her daughter, Emma, near the crackling campfire. The mist drifted lazily through the cliffs, the air cool and crisp. They were camped at the edge of Yosemite, where the mountains rose sharply into the sky, their peaks dusted with the softest layer of snow. 

“Why do you think the tree didn’t mind being alone, Mom?” Emma asked, her voice soft against the whisper of the wind.

Mary smiled, “I think the tree didn’t need to be surrounded by others to feel whole. The quiet, the space around it, gave the tree a chance to see things. To notice the little changes, the way the fog swirled around the rocks, the way the light shifted at dawn.”

Emma nodded slowly, feeling the weight of her mother's words. “So, it wasn’t really lonely?” she asked, trying to understand.

“No,” Mary said, her voice almost a whisper as she watched the last of the daylight fade from the sky. “It wasn’t lonely at all. It learned to embrace the quiet, to feel connected to the world in its own way. Just like how I find little moments when I take photos.” She paused, reaching for her camera beside her. “I look for the moments most people miss—like how the mist hugs the mountains, or how a branch quivers in the wind. Those moments are enough to create the perfect picture.

Emma looked up at the darkening sky, imagining the tree on that precipice, its branches reaching into the mist, hugging the world in its own silent way.

The wind picked up slightly, rustling the trees, and Emma leaned into her mother, feeling the peace of the moment settle around them. "I think the tree would have liked this," Emma said softly. "The quiet."
Mary smiled, her gaze drifting over the misty peaks. "I think it would have, too."

And for a long while, mother and daughter sat together, wrapped in the stillness, both finding solace in the quiet beauty of the mountains, just like the tree on the precipice.
 
Noel Fang
 
**
 
Haiku

rooted in stone
standing before the silent void -
a gnarled juniper
 
Lisa Germany
 
Lisa Germany is an Australian haiku poet writing in the traditional Japanese style
 
**
 
After the Precipice
 
Inevitable--
 
             the fall,
 
and how quickly we fade
 
to mist,
 
our particles, illuminated,
 
brushing against
 
our loved ones’
 
cheeks,
 
wet with
 
memory
 
Eileen Lawrence 
 
Eileen Lawrence is a poet living in Central Texas. Her poetry has been published by Dos Gatos Press, Mutabilis Press, the Fargo Public Library, Visions International, Equinox Journal, and Kindred Characters.
 
**
 
A Rocky Perspective
 
Many a blood has been spilt here,
on the cliffs,
on the ledges,
on the cracks,
on the pebbles,
seeping into the rock
that just caused
their troubles.
 
Some people start the journey up my side,
but they give up,
turn away,
and that’s okay.
They know this fight to the top of my head
is not a battle they want to attend.
 
Some people start the journey up my side,
and keep going
out of sheer determination.
But that’s the problem.
The climb up to the top of my head
is nothing but a goal,
a mission,
a checkmark on a bucket list.
It doesn’t mean anything
once they’re back
on the ground
beside me.
 
Some people start the journey up my side,
they pause,
they scream,
they contemplate.
Their blood seeps into my pores.
Their sweat quenches my thirst.
Their tears cleanse my heart.
But still they climb.
Up, up, up they go
until they reach the top.
They stand on my head,
panting and sweating,
only to gasp
as the fogs lift,
revealing a world
that no one recognizes anymore.
A world they fought to see.
And now they know
who they want to be.
 
These are the strangers I love to observe,
watching and waiting,
to see where they’ll go,
to learn why they’re here,
to know who they are,
and what changes I may bring.
For those who see
where they want to go
and who they want to be,
are the ones who stay,
the ones who remain
seeing
the world
no one sees.
 
Their names carved
into my only friend
who’s stayed forever
on my head.
My constant companion,
who is only revealed
to those who show promise
in facing life’s cruel deals
of cliffs,
ledges,
cracks,
and pebbles,
the fogs will lift
and they will see
the tree
of who they chose to be.
 
Katie Davey
 
Katie Davey is an aspiring author from the rural parts of House Springs, MO. She has published three pieces through three separate challenges for The Ekphrastic Review, the first titled Hidden Prophecies as part of the Richard Challenge, the second titled Listen Well, Listen All, of My Tale to Caution All as part of the Vicente Challenge, and the third titled I Blink as part of the Morrisseau Challenge. She has worked on Harbinger Magazine as a staff intern and is a member of Stephens College's chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. She earned her BFA in Creative Writing, with minors in Equestrian Studies and Psychology, at Stephens College in May 2024.
 
**
 
fleeting
 
There was almost a bird in the light that particled into glitters of silver.  It was shadowed by itself, by the movement of the atmosphere, by the changing composition of reflected air.  Only the ciphered motes were visible, traveling so quickly that I could not catch them in my mind. They merged like a Turner painting, uncertain as to boundaries, all liquid sky, liquid land, dripping inside an unchartable sea. 
 
But the bird—if it was a bird—had disappeared.  Was it a memory?  Only the possibility of falling deeper into the abyss remained imprinted on the clouds of uncertainty before me.  Only the endlessly busy collisions between molecules entered my senses, attempting to navigate with me all the vast empty spaces that were the heart of the matter.  How many bridges had I created and then just as quickly left uncrossed?  So much was temporary—perhaps everything.
 
There was almost a bird.  Or was it a memory?  Where was it now?  Why do we think we can capture time?  Today, yesterday, tomorrow—all those chronicles and photographs—what do they tell us?  Perhaps the almost-bird carries the answer under its imaginary wings.  We are all fraying fragments, illusions.  Nothing is all we can ever possess.
 
Kerfe Roig
 
A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/.
 
**
 
Glimmer of Slate
 
Barely visible--
western white pine,
mountain hemlock,
and lodgepole
pine are engulfed
in gray gauze
as fog blankets
the High Sierra,
granite cliffs formed
by molten rock,
before spring sunrise
ascends above
the Merced River,
high with snowmelt.
In the valley below
amidst the first
blooms of spider
lupines, redbuds,
tufted orange poppies,
and owl’s clover.
I listen attentively
to the guttural murmur
of a nearby cascading
waterfall evoking
the spirit of spring
like Vivaldi’s
Concerto No. 1
while savoring
the tranquility
of Yosemite.
 
Jim Brosnan
 
A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019) copies are available at [email protected]. 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), The Wild Word (Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. 
 
**
 
rock roots
(fibonacci poem)
 
so
deep
beneath the
tree my face
runs smooth gray rock ribbons
and walls you shape me born in fire
 
**

travelling just not there
 
i
will
not move
my feet now
earth anchor and rock belly
no end to my dance with the sun
 
mike sluchinski
 
Mike Sluchinski knows that El Shaddai lives in rainstorms and that, in a drought, he prays for rain! Forget the umbrella! Take time to read his work in The Coachella Review, Inlandia, Welter, Poemeleon, Lit Shark, Proud To Be Vol. 13, The Ekphrastic Review, MMPP (Meow Meow Pow Pow), Kelp Journal & The Wave, ‘the fib review’, Eternal Haunted Summer, Syncopation Lit. Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal (SOFLOPOJO), Freefall, and more coming!
 
**
 
On the Precipice
 
The fog had buried all the heavens then,
the ragged edge of a clifftop I stood on
to find uncloudedness amid the murk,
an obscure outline of mountain appeared.
 
Its frightening shadow overwhelmed me.
My shaking foot were chained to the hard ground
and paralyzed limbs took a freaky shape
just like a withered tree on the parched earth.
 
What kind of sin am I accused of now?
Am I deserved to such great suffering
poor Prometheus ever should endured?
 
The echo faded out into thin air.
Upon a desolate land I just heard
a roar of coyote out of the mist.
 
Toshiji Kawagoe
 
Toshiji Kawagoe, Ph.D. is a professor at Future University Hakodate. He lives in Hokkaido, Japan. His haiku was selected in the 21 Best Haiku of 2021 at the Society of Classical Poets and his poems in classical Chinese have been published in the anthologies of Chinese poetry. His academic works in economics are also published in many books and academic journals.
 
**
 
O, Tutokanula
 
I am gold monkeyflower winking--
minting coins in a granite fissure.
 
I am dark-winged bat folded leatherlike
into your now-cooled crevices.
 
I am peregrine falcon, high
as a mile and a half above
the ponderosa, red sequoia:
my wings wide, poised on a thermal,
eyes locked on land
for whisk of tail or
flick of mammalian ears.
I fall on them:
stoop, and have my fill.
 
But you, O Tutokanula,
you are our great chieftain.
Your winds are angel messengers,
your rains our mysteries.
 
Even waters rushing
in a bridal veil, Pohono,
do not conceal your might.
Even the mist that smokes
like incense from your cataracts
and from your shrouds and clouds
cannot obscure your sacred majesty.
 
Fierce granite proclaims in answer,
Climb, climb
to my stunted solo pine
with its ruggèd, forkèd trunk.
 
O, Tutokanula--
here God descends
as on some ancient holy hill.
His face is hidden,
for to look on Him
so high above the earth
is hazardous presumption.
 
Climb if you will, the voice commands
in basso profundo. Be not precipitate.
 
Lizzie Ballagher
 
One of the winners in Ireland’s 2024 Fingal Poetry Festival Competition and in 2022’s Poetry on the Lake, Lizzie Ballagher focuses on landscapes, both psychological and natural. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2018. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poems have appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/
 
**
 
The Echo of Their Heart
 
Life on the Precipice by Franka M. Gabler is a therapeutic photo
After the threatening but divine painting The Wild Hunt of Odin (ARBO Challenge).
 
Tree, cliff and photographer all have the same rhythm.
We can hear the echo of the artist’s heart, we can feel her Art.
The mist protecting their intimacy,
Above all, this superb photo evokes harmony.
Harmony between a rock, a tree and Franka M. Gabler.
The echo of their heart has the same beat.
 
I went to Yosemite National Park a few years ago.
I had a picnic at the foot of these majestic cliffs crowned with trees.
Through those soothing and peaceful giants,
I felt connected to the earth and the sky.
Huge walls acting as guardians of their secrets,
Shields protecting and defending the vulnerability of Nature.
 
The resilient life of the trees supported by tons and tons of rock.
Aged more than one hundred million years,
They aroused my admiration and my concern.
I just wanted to stay with them,
Worried about the fragility of our environment.
 
Jean Bourque
 
Jean writes from Montreal, province of Quebec, Canada. He is French-speaking and a retired specialist teacher of children having learning disabilities. He loves Nature and painting. He is learning English. Recently he discovered the ekphrastic challenges, a good opportunity to practice. He also discovered that he loves writing and that writing is like painting with words.
 ​

​Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

The prompt this time is Pavonia, by Francis Picabia. Deadline is January 31, 2025. 

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​ Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD).

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include PICABIA CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, January 31, 2025.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 

12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 

13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
​
​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.

Let Them Be Free 

—for poet Wendell Berry and author Mel Robbins 

The midwinter blues coalesce 
as the gusty grays collide 
constellate 
near the diagonal darkness 
of an airborne battle. 
Here 
weapons deploy amid legions of chaos. 

Unlike the legends of brutality 
rendered atop canvas 
or the reality 
of present-day feuds between humans 
the owl 
and raven 
the goat 
and horse 
fend for well-being 
seek mellow horizons 
as they 
glide 
walk 
and gallop toward circumstances 
within their control 
practice 
The Peace of Wild Things 
and 
The Let Them Theory.  

Jeannie E. Roberts

Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of several books, including The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. 

**

Through the nightly air

(from the opening line of the poem Asgaardsreien, by Johan Sebastian Welhaven.)

Dark and hideous
burns a sunrise
bruising sacred goodness of a life.
Combating chores on days
of no consequence, women
weave a vapor chorus,
let the green fly into the web-
while the men assault cheap liquors.
Turmoiled mind, howling time
drowns murmurs and the scent.

Secrets smolder
through the nightly air.

Abha Das Sarma

An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. 

**
​
[frothing black horses]

frothing black horses
presage the coming
storm of the hunting
forces of rain

forcing the hollow-eyed
prey of the following
cataract coarsening
weather-veins

pulsing repulsing
all hallows evening
all Wotan hailing
unmortal flesh

flushed
flown

OddWritings, a.k.a. George Pestana

OddWritings, a.k.a. George Pestana, has a degree in computer science.  He enjoys playing with words, doing crossword puzzles, writing poems, and occasionally publishing them.  You can learn more about him at http://oddwritings.com .

**

​Ode to Odin

Odin bursts into the dead of night
his wild vein horsing on his forehead
haunted by the bright mirage
of the muses’ porcelain souls
lost in peripatetic cadence
luring him in chase
through Valhalla drowning darkness
as their gloss blinds his mind
and he can’t but grab and run
till all porcelain ghosts are dumped
into the crack of dawn.
In a way it’s carnage.
In a way - bondage.
Odin has awareness of none.
He belongs to the Solstice taunt.
By dawn Odin is oddly gently numb.
You awake to what made
your wynorrific dream.

Ekaterina Dukas

Ekaterina Dukas, MA, writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and enjoys being frequently honoured by TER and its challenges. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni.

**

Tidings from Mjolnir

Shut your eyes, for we have been awoken
              by the flames of Valhalla to ride
into your moonless night.
              Run, while you still can, into the shallow 
depths of your camp tents, brothels--
              pray that the pain shall kill you swift when the 
valkyries stab out your battle cries with spears,
              lay you down with bow and arrow,
condemn your chainmail armour and naked bodies 
              to the lowest layer of Helheim.
Our ravens have brought death unto whole armies,
              raised hordes of harlots from graves, 
so waste not your last moments on thoughts of escape--
              Rather, peer past those billowing curtains and look
to the rolling clouds, shadow mountains, thunder, Thor.

Angelina Carrera

Angelina Carrera, 22, is a neurodivergent poet, Philosophy major, and Creative Writing minor at UC Berkeley. She is winner of First Matter Press’ 2024 Ekphrastic Poem Contest. Her work has been featured in After Happy Hour Review, F(r)iction, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and more.

**

Wild Hunt

Odin’s terrifying procession across the night sky
A wild hunt, seeking all those not hidden, to die
Across the winter landscape, dead souls would fly
It presaged a catastrophe, such as a plague or war
A motif with origins in Germanic and Nordic lore
Seeking and abducting witnesses to join the horde
 
The moon looks on, through the thickening cloud
Cries of the many rabid hunters, deafeningly loud
All blinded by violence, none ever shall be cowed
The dawn soon to come, the sun with its own fire
Survivors, to be left trembling in the bloody mire
Seeing them overhead with bared teeth and sword

Howard Osborne

Howard has written poetry and short stories, also a novel and several scripts. With poems published online and in print, he is a published author of a non-fiction reference book and several scientific papers many years ago. He is a UK citizen, retired, with interests in writing, music and travel.​

**

Truth or Dare?

Near fifty past in Wistmans’s Wood
connections with The Hunt, their sale   
for tourist bounty, rural rides,
though county next, in Cornish lore
the Devil’s Dandy Dogs seemed frail.      

Grimm tales, long spread, all underlaid;
did delta drain, strain deemed aura?   
Here’s host of pruning, thinning ways -
those Marvel Comics, Quatermass -
with music, modern media.  

But myths are truths, allegory,
so commonalities exist,    
a pattern made, if not pre-laid,
each culture with twist patented,
like stubborn stubble, winnowed grist.   

Midst winter woods, ferocious winds,    
both howling hounds and growling storms,             
as plagues, wars, famines strip the ground,
land spirits from cult-of-the-dead,
all baying, gallop, restless forms.    

These spectral and nocturnal hordes,
a muscle memory of tears,     
less threat by naming, slotted box,
or by transforming to our taste -
so fairy host, those vicious, clears.    

As culture vultures search their roots, 
find routes by which we share our fears,   
new faiths accommodate as must,
adopt or demonise as best -
for monks and missionaries steer.  

In harmony, strange Schönberg see -
while Weber also joins that Liszt.   
Here Hecate and Wicca merge
in pagan pantheon with Norse,
that none be missed in vaulting mist?     

The nightly frothing horse stampede,
thronged ravens of the Odin flock,      
those spectral riders, Arbo’s frame -
feel menace din of restless souls, 
these trolls, werewolves, Valhalla stock. 
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

**

Hunted

nightmare carves the dark
like fire breaking
under rough clouds
a stampede of wild horses
their hooves iron anvils
striking sparks
from a gunmetal sky--
ghost-ridden
chased from the last
dull shelter
split open and broken
empty  bone shell crushed
out of  hope and no
chance of rescue
where dark squalls of crow
and raven shoulder past
even the faintest
memory of light
and I crouch beneath the weight
of judgement’s heel and wait
the final hammerfall of night
 
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, The Memory Palace, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic and Clare MacQueen, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, Inscribe, the Storyteller Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection, How to Become Invisible, that chronicles a bipolar journey, is now available from Kelsay books, Amazon, and the author.

**

Ode to Woden

When Wednesday's child 
though full of woe 
won the war
we warriors 

wandered home to whelp 
our wee ones
 
oh
how we wept 
whence 
we saw 
The Wild Hunt of Odin 
where
once again
we women
were limbed without 
wearing 
nary a gown
 
Donna-Lee Smith

Donna-Lee Smith writes from Gotland Island where the Baltic Sea nibbles the coastline and the Vikings rest their souls in ships of stone.

**

Gehenna Revolts

Of all the evils man has endeavored,
one yet remains, too long endured.
Convicting mortal nature—a devil!
masquerades as both magistrate and Lord.

So, in coalition and common reason,
the damned then to the depths resort.
Where in concert as resounding Legion, 
against the deity they lead revolt.

Together, harmonic in agreement, 
the demonic chamber forever pleads.
While the Archon stokes over Hades’ ember, 
devouring sacraments of ill-will and misdeed.

The guilt it savours are remorseful flavours--
morsels of the bitter treasure hoard.
Until again, at vengeance end, 
the unrepentant feed their god once more.

Jory Como

Jory Como is an aspiring American writer residing in Christchurch, New Zealand.

**

Inheritance

My ghosts are visible but unrecognizable.
 
we wish
on stars, on myth,
on the magic of words
spelled into narratives
that journey us
alive
 
My ghosts cannot be confined.
 
alive
inside darkness
awaiting the ending
of time, ethereal
layers scattered
like seeds
 
My ghosts are ravenous and skeletal.
 
layers
of seeds scattered
into history—what
grows from our bones?  are we
tied to earth or
spirit?
 
My ghosts are beasts of legend, followers of frenzied flight.
 
spirit
relics remade
into dust, particles
that travel in wavelengths
of long lost souls,
shadows
 
My ghosts hold the darkest hour untouched by light.
 
shadows
emptied of self--
moon-mirrors death-dancing--
as if they could tell us
who was master,
who thrall
 
My ghosts are divine, profane, profound.

Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Follow her explorations on her blogs,https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/.

**

These Visions Sadden Me

so don’t expect a love poem,
minus enticing apples and rose petals
it shrieks of conquest and power,
not one brush stroke of humanity.
Evil heaves itself across a terrifying sky
hunters seize unfortunate souls
unable to find refuge in time,
but, in the midst of this ambush
what about those lithe Valkyries─
are they compassionate heroes
or hostile compadres steering
the ill-fated to the slaughter?
The opposite of a love poem,
there’s no hope in this melee,
only sorrow that history and lore
often celebrate brutality.

Elaine Sorrentino

Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Gyroscope Review, Quartet Journal, The Raven’s Perch, and Panoplyzine. She hosts the Duxbury Poetry Circle and is looking forward having her first poetry collection, Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit, published by Kelsay Books in spring of 2025. Visit Elaine online at https://www.elainesorrentinopoet.com/.

**

​They May Fight on the Clouds 

They may fight on the clouds riding horseback.
They may turn the rivers red with blood.
But Odin, the god of poets, the god of war
With his band of female handmaiden warriors 
His Valkyries, he will not give anyone room.
Except for those few, his choosers of the slain
And the slain will then be carried to Valhalla,
As heroes to once more live immortally again
 
They may fight on the field of battle valiantly.
They may even sing of victories fairly won.
But Odin, the god of poets, the god of war
He will throw his spear again and again.
While riding his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir,
And his spear will hit its mark and sink 
Into the hearts of beasts like a venomous snake.
And no doubt his victims will undoubtedly fall.
 
But Odin, the god of war, the god of the dead
And the hall of the slain he will use his knowledge,
His sorcery to defeat those who won’t kneel,
Bow before his royal feet. Wisdom is his alone.
After bartering his sight for a far greater insight
Those who don't agree will swing from the gallows.
They may fight on the clouds riding horseback.
They may turn the rivers red with bubbling blood.
 
But Odin, the god of poets, the god of war
Today, he alone knows what’s truly in store.
With his band of female warrior handmaidens
He will cut the beast of the field down to straw.
With a party of airborne horsemen accompanied
By ravens and owls, the Wild Hunt is upon us.
And all are sent scurrying like a fleeing whore.
Back to the places where sleep's a wild pagan boar.

Mark Andrew Heathcote

Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. His poems have been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed.

**

To Nicolai Arbo Regarding The Wild Hunt of Odin

   There are forces far beyond us   eyes behind us would explain
   as torrential fury's vengeance
   gods could wreak upon the vain

   at the turning of the winter
   through the dark of longest night
   as the chill of bitter warning
   in a wind of lethal might

   to remind us flesh is mortal
   but its soul might well survive
   to be prey of Odin's hunters
   for the hell in which they thrive

   while they leave our ash to fallow
   as the terror thus they hallow.

You paint that tale in single frame
with screech implied of mythic fame
and wind as if the eerie moan
of souls removed from flesh and bone

amid the thundered rumbling sound
of hooves that strike the air as ground
emerging from concealing clouds
unbound it seems from yielding shrouds

becoming capes that flutter free
as terror eye can plainly see
against the veil of shuttered sky
at dusk so prematurely nigh

that crackles with the distant fire
of life extinguished on its pyre
to kindle in the warming glow
rebirth as spring we will not know

except by deed or brush or pen
that tells the tale of who we've been.

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. 

​Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

The prompt this time is Life on the Precipice, by Franka M. Gabler. Deadline is January 17, 2025. 

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​ Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD).

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include GABLER CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, January 17, 2025.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 

12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 

13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
​
​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.

​ 
Can You?
 
Arms reaching out
Pink, beautiful
You can
 
Arms reaching out
Green, ugly
You can’t
 
Make up your mind
Think again
You can 
 
Antje Bothin
 
Antje Bothin loves writing poetry. She lives in Scotland and has recently authored an inspiring book on a treasure hunt around Iceland. Her poems were published in several international anthologies. When not being creative, she can be found doing voluntary work in nature or drinking tea.
 
**

Beggars
 
As if their life were draining away,
Wounds on their arms,
Beggars show how life could do harm.
Hands outstretched towards Infinity,
Desperate hands,
Full of hope.
Quest for a small piece of happiness,
Quest for a small piece of freedom.
Heads hypnotized by a low and false light.
A disappointed man turns his back
On this hypocrite donor
And secretly informs his pals
Not to believe in artificial promises,
But to believe in themselves.
 
Jean Bourque
 
Jean Bourque lives in Montreal, province of Quebec. He is French-speaking and a retired specialist teacher. As a retiree, one of his plans is to learn English. A new friend, Donna-Lee Smith, with whom he has the pleasure of chatting, introduced him to The Ekphrastic Review. Jean met Donna-Lee at the Conversation Exchange program that pairs up Francophones with Anglophones in the McGill Community for Lifelong Learning. This is his second challenge submission.
 
**
 
Dream or Reality?
 
Sporadic colours, green and pink cover the hordes of people. Arms reach out in desperation for something or someone and yell: “Can’t, can’t! I find it distracting and frightening. 

My body trembles as I watch the crowd grow in abundance and the chants become louder. I try to move, but my feet won’t lift from the ground, and the sweat pours down my neck as my heart pounds profusely.

I realize the multitude of hands are coming for me. I try to run, but I still can’t move, and I have no voice to scream. Suddenly, I feel a touch and shudder.

“Wake up, Char, you’re having a bad dream.”

I open my eyes, and my boyfriend is leaning over, his hand on my shoulder. 

“Rob, I had the strangest dream.” 

When my eyes focus, the air is filled with green and pink. 
 
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, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna.
 
**
 
Cordelia
 
Imagine Goneril and Regan lurid green 
I am the colour of dawn
Look carefully at my eyes
Full of wonder and dismay
Father in the foreground slips into madness
I am daughter
I am fool
Between self and family
I can barely/I can't even
 
Lara Dolphin
 
A native of Pennsylvania, Lara Dolphin is an attorney, nurse, wife and mom of four amazing kids. Her chapbooks include In Search Of The Wondrous Whole (Alien Buddha Press), Chronicle Of Lost Moments (Dancing Girl Press), and At Last a Valley (Blue Jade Press). 
 
**
 
Whispers
 
Psst
listen
hear me.
 
Psst
look
see me
look this way.
 
Psst 
I will gift you it all
put everything 
in a blue bag
ready for your
hands to grasp.
 
Psst
you’re still
not listening,
you’re looking away.
 
Psst
Hey, you all in all your colours 
your faces not the same 
but still you face 
the same 
way
away.
 
Psst
the bag 
has gone.
 
I threw it away.
 
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  Pushcart Prizes, 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 
 
**

The Beckoning
 
Come pray
      with me
I'll feed 
your addiction
to the Valkyries
 
Come play
      with me
I'll whisper
my love against
your wisdom
 
Come stay
      with me
I'll mend 
your flesh in
silver tones
 
Come away 
      with me
I'll seed 
my weeping into 
your bones
 
Donna-Lee Smith
 
Donna-Lee Smith occasionally writes from a Viking graveyard on Gotland Island awash by the Baltic Sea.
 
 
**
 
The Painterly Function of Arms, Hands, Squash, and Modal Verbs 
 
1. 
Where rumours linger 
arms reach 
beseech relief 
unite in resemblance 
stretch to receive the blush of compassionate light. 
 
2. 
Where rumours linger 
the roundness of colour arrests the eye 
amplifies the pumpkin in Caribbean blue 
as the bottle gourd listens in lateral repose 
its sage ear tilts to take heed. 
Here 
the artist whispers 
spreads suspicion 
expresses uncertainty to his still life. 
 
3. 
Where rumours linger 
you reach for answers 
beseech relief 
lean toward the possibilities of modal verbs. 
You can and will persist midst brushes with can’t 
find comfort in your abilities and the wish to receive 
the blush of compassionate light 
the unseen companion who perseveres 
when the voice of doubt strikes.
 
Jeannie E. Roberts
 
Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of several books, including The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs.  
 
**
 
What Haunts My Eyes Isn’t Can/Can’t
 
What haunts my eyes isn’t can/can’t
How much money or alms can be earned for wages?
What haunts my eyes is why I too can’t fly.
Lord knows I’m green with envy at times.
Working for loose change—petals blowing on the tide
A brush stroke here or two that catches the gospel.
 
I sing for the bees and sleep on a cactus bed.
I guess this easel is about to flower and suck me in.
What haunts my eyes isn’t can/can’t
It’s a tear I can’t somehow wipe away at a wine bar.
What haunts my eyes isn’t that it’s my birthday today.
And I haven’t figured it all out yet.
 
What haunts my eyes is I want to bare my soul and undress.
And remove every falsehood till I’m broken and found
But secretly I believe I am not that gifted.
Or even that proud, look, I wear no garb of gold.
What haunts my eyes is a memory of when you were mine.
And we interconnected like a jasmine vine in the dew.
 
And secretly you were mine like a flash of lightning.
Posing in the nude,
Burning my fingers like only you could ever do.
Oh, Picasso had two wives.
And dozens of lovers they did as Picasso’s muses
Six mistresses lit a torch to his Rose Period and set it aflame.
 
But I am not a pretender.
I want to whisper, Darling, we’ll meet later.
Sooner or later after the turpentine dries
And the jasmine flowers fade from sight.
There’ll be no can/can’t see you later.
Whatever haunts my eyes, I hope it's you when I look back.
 
Mark Andrew Heathcote
 
Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. His poems have been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed.
 
**
 
Can vs Can’t - Interpretation 
(a villanelle) 
 
Chance synchronizes interconnected Can vs Can’t 
red verses green as arms semáforos
like cabriole points up to  ‘xx’ vs ’x y’ as signals slant
 
volcanic clashed abstract red contrast.
Hauteur, y tu picaros
chance synchronizes interconnected Can vs. Can’t 
 
brushes surreptitious angst,
joy reverses chiaroscuro
like cabriole points up  ‘xx’ vs. ‘xy’  objects slant?!
 
engagé faces in shock surceased
as ingenuous belief cerulean bag of kudos.
Synchronicity chanced interconnected Can vs. Can’t ,
 
Equivocating comic iconoclast
clarity in the extreme so seems malapropos
rhyme without reason matched claret masked
 
precisely seriously verdant,
gestures humorous yellows
chance synchronized interconnected Can vs. Can’t 
Like cabriolet points up to code ‘xx’ vs. ‘xy’ as signals slant.
 
Carolyn Mack
 
Retired teacher, and grandmother, Carolyn Mack resides in San Diego backcountry and Cortes Island, BC, Canada. Although living abroad while raising her family, she studied in Oregon at Southern Oregon State and Guanajuato University. More recently she has published a book of illustrations. Her poems have been accepted in literary journals here and in the UK. 
 
**
 
Turning Can't into Can
 
Philippe shook his head in dismay.  The dress-rehearsal dance practice was going very badly.  Yes, Giselle looked beautiful, as always.  Odd, but still beautiful.  This was what happened when the bride-to-be roped in her artistic friends to help with wedding preparations.  Philippe, a superb dancer and choreographer, had been tasked with the special wedding dance where Giselle and bridesmaid would welcome the groom.  A groom, who of course was not here, and would not arrive in town until just before the wedding.
 
The problem had never been Giselle, who Philippe knew as both a friend and a colleague.  She would pirouette and prance easily though the simple routine he'd prepared, ever the centre of attention, just as she deserved.  Even the three bridesmaids, two of Giselle's cousins and an old high school friend, all untalented cloggers, could manage the unsophisticated steps.
 
No, the problem was Guido-Jorge, who had decided they were going to do the make-up.  Despite Giselle's request for something "minimal and natural"  Guido-Jorge had insisted on 'unleashing their inner auras' as they'd put it.  That was why Philippe had been confronted with Giselle in shades of cerise, still beautiful of course, and the green bridesmaids looking ready for a role in a pantomime as the wicked step-sisters or witches round a cauldron.
 
"Carla! Darla! Sonya!  Try not to tread on Giselle's dress.  Less of the soulful yearning! Project more joy!"  Philippe knew his directions were not getting through.  As soon as they'd been painted the three girls seemed in a trance.  One of them, Sonya, was only half-painted, though for some reason her bare arm had a prosthetic open wound, 'to let the evil miasma flow out', according to Guido-Jorge.
 
Philippe had tried to reason with Giselle, but to no avail.
 
"Hush, Philippe.  I'm so honoured that Guido-Jorge decided to help.  They're a genius.  I know it's unusual, but what a statement it makes!"
 
Philippe wasn't sure exactly what it was saying, especially as Guido-Jorge was insisting that various legumes and plant bulbs be brought in as props for the simple dance routine.
 
"Hush, Philippe.  It's part  of their cultural heritage.  They are bringing nature into their art.  The dancers are part of that.  Everything is from the spirit, the aura.  Just relax, lean in.  That's what I'm doing.  All will be well."  Giselle seemed very at peace with it all.
 
"I'm not sure I can..."
 
"Hush, Philippe.  Turn that can't into can."
 
"Philippe!  Here, drink this.  Cassava, papaya and a few medicinal herbs.  It will recharge your positive energy.  Your aura is shading towards cyan.  That must stop!"  Guido-Jorge held out a tall glass of a viscous pale yellow drink.
 
"Yes, Philippe.  It really helped me calm down," said Giselle.  There was a chorus of yesses from the bridesmaids.
 
Philippe thought to himself, what harm can a fruit and herb drink do?  He drank down the contents of the glass.
 
"Argghhh!  That's more like it!"  A calmness and an inner energy suffused Philippe.  Everything was clear. The girls were the perfect colours, each radiating their own special spark.  "Okay.  Giselle, Carla, Darla, Sonya!  Follow my lead.  We are going to turn can't into can. Let's put on a wedding dance like no-one's ever seen before."
 
Guido-Jorge smiled.  The dancers and their director swayed and moved to an internal beat.  It was always so rewarding to connect people with their inner auras, unleash their inner "can'."
 
Emily Tee
 
Emily Tee is a writer living in the UK Midlands. She's had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review’s challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print, including in the 2025 Poetry Diary from Sunday Mornings at the River.
 
**
 
What We Had in the After-Life

The oarsman hissed, Ladies, prepare your songs. Is it not a new year each day? Rafts knocking the shore, we scrambled out as missiles fired one hundred kilometres to the east. Faces uplifted, arms outstretched we unstitched our lips, searching for psalms our souls did not understand how to sing. Breasts and arms bullet-holed black, our bodies were stained with the blood and putrescence of those we left behind. As we laid sacrifices to the victors on sand rimmed in ash, one bruised green gourd, one blue silk bag squat with salt, a gleaming tea tray reflected the face of she who wanted to believe there might yet be mercy.

Janice Scudder
 
Janice Scudder lives in Colorado. 
 
**
 
Hands
 
It looks like a hot bubble
that breads biblical trouble.
Love isn’t in the air.
Mankind is in spiritless despair.
AI is a Flying Dutchman, in a way.    
Real hands are called to uphold   
the poor old panting world.
Spellbound by the rapture,
the artist galvanized his brush to capture
all burnout labourers unto his canvass    
sheltering their prayer for a sway
of our god-given gift –
sharing the planet in good faith.
The hues hint their vocations.
The crimson hands pulled a child
out of a shrapnel typhoon
helping her to walk the earth again
and making her parents rejoice in heavens.
The pallid hands cooked soup
for the desponded homeless on the street
discounted by gluttonous Midas’-like fists.
The green hands reached
the shifting verdant edge
in a heated argument exchange
for stopping yet another private jet.
No luck as yet.
 
But there is always hope left –
wrapped in a blue heaven-sent present
to be opened on Christmas morning –
the magic that all await to be revealed
like a smile slowly blooming
upon hungry mouth following the spoon
from pot to lip, man, it’s closing the gap
between heaven and earth!
Planets’ reclusiveness resolved,
joy is at hand –
a fig fallen from the garden of Eden
for freshly squeezed sweet nothings
as it was in the beginning.
But just about to sample its scriptural taste,
I notice something I can’t understand
though I can comprehend –  
some smudged impression,  
some chimera of dread
between some likeness of teeth,
though I can’t be sure, indeed.
Yet, I can comprehend
though I can’t understand –
a phantom trying to loot
our bona fide gift.
I can’t comprehend
though I can understand –
the ghost of the upper hand –
the artist’s cold dish best served
brushed off hand.  
  
Ekaterina Dukas
 
Ekaterina Dukas, MA, writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems have frequently been honored by TER and its Challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni.
 
**
 
To Pascal Möhlmann Regarding CAN/CAN'T
 
You paint both feast of Him as gift
and feast of His command to lift
the hands that beckon Heaven's reach
instead as lessons they would teach
 
extending Grace to spirits poor,
embraced as those who suffer more,
to be, by toughened love of kin,
the mirror that reflects within
 
the strength to know that sacrifice,
endured is blessing's precious price,
as service to the greater whole
of common, selfless, sovereign soul
 
whose yearning is the trust of yore
evolving as forevermore.
 
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.
 
**
 
Can/Can’t 
 
Turnip cabbage 
Butternut squash 
Can of olive oil 
 
Mother do help us 
 
We can’t. We can’t do it  
 
The knowledge of ages  
The ancestral bliss 
You contain it 
 
We turned to tiktok 
We turned to twitter 
We turned to our contemporaries 
Feeding us their feeds 
We eat our daily pixels  
Swallow the whole of the world 
On a perfectly clean dish 
  
We can’t do it 
Father do help us 
 
The turnip cabbage 
The butternut squash 
Can of olive oil 
They prompt in us the appropriate scene 
The classic kitchen 
The good soup 
The right choice of kitchen tools 
We can imagine. We can 
We can exactly pinpoint the essence 
We know the stereotype, the prototype and the exquisite 
We know how to judge 
We are judgement in the flesh 
Perfect pawns of categorical imperative 
 
But what about turnip cabbage 
Madre Mia 
What about butternut squash 
Please mother  
Hold us 
Comfort us 
 
Stien Pijp 
 
Stien Pijp lives in the Dutch country side. She enjoys thinking, poetry and clay. She works as a linguist in the field of aphasia and care. A dreamy person who likes to hang around and walk her dog.
 
**
 
All That Was
 
Bright upon the night long rain,
flapping mid-air
like the sunbirds in silence-
imprinting moments
that never came. Blue and deep,
all that was.
O lord of miracles I offer you
life's celebrations, beauty once held-
chirping of robins and blackbirds,
nightmares through early hours.
 
I offer you my burden today
of not praying enough.
Darting thoughts like the naked iron rods
out of years in layered bricks,
slipping spirit from the weeping holes.
 
Abha Das Sarma
 
An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru.
 
**
 
Evolution
                              
"If she tells fortunes with a deck of fallen leaves
Until it comes out right --
 
(How could you not love a woman
who cheats at the Tarot?) "
 
Robert Hass, The Problem of Describing Color
 
 
We could have been anything     possible or improbable,
call girls or soloists     in a church choir in the country,
 
sisters born naturally     in the verdant bed of Mother Nature --
we were three: Ivy, Vetiver and Rose.     Ivy, a twin, had a passion
 
for still life     so she painted a flower poet, stems and leaves
of Ivy (her namesake)     in a lovely shade of turquoise,
 
its colour called the sky-stone     by Native American Indians,
a blue-veined rock they used in ritual healing.    Vetiver
 
(the other twin) said water --     its rippling aquas --
reminded her of the springtime     when she learned to swim
 
in a pond named for Eustacia Vye     in a Thomas Hardy
novel -- a tragedy --    written before Vetiver's arm went missing.
 
Rose said Pascal took too long to paint it --    the lost limb --
using a shade of algae green:    Painterly, complex & tripartite,
 
how could he fantasize all of us?     Calling us his little secret?
Never trust a man who wears a watch!     Rose came to him
 
with open arms     reaching for a basket full of stars;
Ivy said her wish was for a starfish    an open creel
 
in deep-sea clouds     where lovers' dreams turn upside down
& Vetiver's  an essence.     Call her grass -- a miracle
 
of propagation, all the answers in her roots     (some might say
the grass is greener) a seasonal dissertation     when work evolves
 
in brush strokes -- with jabs and dabs --     a Rose
by her own name, with fewer thorns     guarded by a bulb
 
of garlic...
                      How can one painting   have 3 lost loves,
                      evolving, bold     in wildflower souls,
                      with passionate stems    growing quickly
 
although our art is timeless --     an artist's question of Can't or Can
as he paints us in our new colours 
as we spill from a moon-silver paint pan?
 
Laurie Newendorp
 
Laurie Newendorp, whose Dutch surname means "new in the town" although she is now a grandmother, has been honored multiple times by The Ekphrastic Review's challenges. Her book, When Dreams Were Poems, explores the relationship of life to poetry and art. Eustacia Vye (a character as well as the name of a pink rose) becomes "part of the pond's world of algae" when she drowns in Thomas Hardy's Return of The Native.
 
**
 
Art Reflecting Life
 
He applied
the finishing flourishes
on his 55th birthday
months before
Glinda and Elphaba
defied gravity in theaters,
both painting and flick
a depiction of inclusivity,
each spreading the truth
that despite
the color of our skin
our needs are the same.
 
Elaine Sorrentino
 
Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Haiku Universe, New Verse News, Sparks of Calliope, Gyroscope Review, Quartet Journal, The Raven’s Perch, and Panoplyzine. She hosts the Duxbury Poetry Circle, and was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. Her first collection of poetry, called Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit is in production at Kelsay Books.
 
**
 
Supplication 
 
These girls, arms flung up in adoration,
yearning to be part of the performer’s
world. Swifties pledged to adore
their Queen.
 
Light from the stage spills over
them, kissing their young faces
with garish green and bastard amber.
 
For a few hours, they can worship
their heroine.  Arms outstretched,
they look like Michaelangelo’s
Creation of Adam.
 
But this time, it’s no Sistine Chapel.
More likely, a sports coliseum.
A man turns away from the Goddess,
ignoring the girls and waiting
for the screaming
to stop.
 
Lynne Kemen
 
Lynne Kemen’s full-length book of poetry, Shoes for Lucy, was published by SCE Press in 2023. Woodland Arts Editions published her chapbook, More Than a Handful in 2020. Her work is anthologized in The Memory Palace: an ekphrastic anthology (Ekphrastic Editions, 2024), Seeing Things and Seeing Things 2 (Woodland Arts, 2020 and 2024). Lynne is President of the Board of Bright Hill Press and has served on many other not-for-profit boards. She is an Editor and Interviewer for Blue Mountain Review. She is a nominee for a Pushcart Prize this year.
 
**
 
On Mohlmann’s Can/Can’t
 
Why the women and why
the whispers, who has done it--
 
the thing not spoken of? Who
has the right to point?
 
And who the guilty ones?
This painting is fake, it’s staged,
 
I fear. The women needy, to be sure,
but who holds their destinies,
 
who opens their doors? It looks
like the man is unfriendly. But
 
see the green hands, grasping--
always grasping for the best,
 
the women want more 
than the rest.
At this hour, the male
 
holds the power; the women 
think they’re bereft, don’t 
know they're actually blest.
 
The man holds the moneybag
near, the women peer 
 
in the wrong
direction. It’s a painting 
trying to be 
 
a Greek Chorus, as if a god 
such as Horus could answer 
their pleas.
 
Carole Mertz
 
Carole Mertz, author of Toward a Peeping Sunrise, a chapbook, and Color and Line (a poetry collection of ekphrastic and other poems) resides with her husband in Parma, Ohio. In December, 2024, she published her hundredth review; many of these cover the works of contemporary poets, see World Literature Today, Full Stop, Mom Egg Review, Heavy Feather, and Oyster River Pages.
 
**
 
Can/Can’t
 
or can/can 
whatever
just kick it 
as far as it will go
let it roll 
or let it ride 
all the marbles
all the time(s)
tell it slant 
or force a rhyme
meter made me
meter matters
murder me with silent chatter
truth be told
teeth shatter
and meat pulls away
from the bone
I hate to say
he was right
i’d rather
tell a story about sunlight
but nothing impresses
like the grotesque
green = enmeshment
we can’t even see
anymore
glass is cloudy
mirrors have gone brown
and we’re left with intention
and a microphone
of all things
give it here
I’ve got one last
song to sing.
 
Crystal Karlberg
 
Crystal Karlberg has been a middle school teacher, library assistant, mentor, advisor, activist. Her poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Penn Review, Best New Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, etc.
 
**
 
Seventy Different Voices
​
cataclysmic cracks in the skull
designed by fifty dearest dissuaders
and hopeless hopefuls;
another twenty wait and wait,
their choice of topic an arm’s length away,
their strong voices ready to boom,
conserved through the menial issues
cackled, clawed and chipped away at
by the cacophonous rest, loud without purpose,
piercing the sound barrier
for the fun of it, to sleep through
what matters more;
come portentous point in history,
and the handful turn on the megaphones
to drown in a silence of an unused throat.
 
Manisha Sahoo
 
Manisha Sahoo (she/her), from Odisha, India, has a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and a Master’s in English. Her words have appeared/are set to appear in Inked in Gray, Usawa Literary Review, Bridges Not Borders, Apparition Lit, Sylvia Magazine, Atticus Review, and others. You can find her on Instagram/X @LeeSplash
 
**
 

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

The prompt this time is The Wild Hunt of Odin, by Peter Nicolai Arbo. Deadline is January 3, 2025. 

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way.​ Scroll down to donate $5CAD (about $3.75 USD).

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include ARBO CHALLENGE in the subject line.

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, January 3, 2025.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 

12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 

13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
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​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
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15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.

Editor's Note:

It was a treat to read all the responses to Maud Lewis's painting. Many of you were moved by her ability to produce joyful art in the midst of a poverty-stricken life. Still others were filled with memories of snowy winters, train journeys, grandmothers, and mentors. And finally, some wrote about their current climes and how they differ from Train Through Town. 

Happy winter or summer, wherever you may live! Write On!

Sandi

**
  
Maudie - a haibun
 
your tough life didn’t show in the vibrantly coloured canvases you sold for just a few dollars 
nor did it show in the wide crescent-moon smile across your face or the love for your man 
and his for you ‘til the end, still in the same house on Highway 1, its front door so close to the
road, a passing car’s tyres would send a tremble through its walls, shaking you awake, calling
your fragile bones to rise; entreating your fingers to capture life in all its pretty commonness
 
trailblazer
a small woman
and her paintbrush
 
I see you painted yourself in this time - you and he together watching snow fall to blanket hills you’ve never actually seen: every hue thick with brightness so unlike the white exterior of your tiny house, although the inside was a different matter - they’re all the rage now, tiny houses. The rest of us have cottoned on to what you already knew, that small and simple lets the sun shine and doesn’t block its glory, and can leave a mark much bigger than itself
 
pneumonia
in Canada’s winter
not surprising
 
Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman  

Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman is an Australian poet who lives and writes in the coastal village of Lake Tabourie, NSW, on traditional Yuin country. She enjoys seeing her poetic work published in various excellent literary spaces. 
 
**
 
O Take Me Back
 
O take me back to childhood on the Maudie Lewis train,
Where firs are green and snow is white and ponies mind the rein;
Where there’s a ridge to every roof, a church to every hill,
The skies are clear, the smoke is sweet and no one’s ever ill.
O take me to the cookie tin that calmed me as a kid,
And let me live forever in the landscape on the lid,
Where clothes are pink or sunny gold and shadows minty blue,
And nobody has scary things they really have to do.

O take me to the softer lands of cotton and of thread:
The patient, careful needlepoint that hangs above the bed,
Where someone helped a child to make her stitches neat and straight,
And gently took it over when the tangles grew too great;
Don’t leave me in a place where crippled women slave all day
To summon up our fantasies because they know they pay;
Take me where nothing’s ever lost but all swings round again,
As bright and clean and painless as the Maudie Lewis train.
 
Ruth S. Baker
 
Ruth S. Baker has published in a few poetry journals. She has a special love for animals and visual art.
 
**

She’s Coming from a Place of Happy Memories 
 
                                                                  "She preferred the colours just as they are...
                                                                    paintings made on cardboard, and little
                                                                    pieces of wood, sold on the roadside."
                                                                          The Moving Story of Artist Maud Lewis,
                                                                                                         Danielle Groen
                                             
                                                                    "But secretly, while the grandmother
                                                                     busies herself at the stove,
                                                                      the little moons fall like tears
                                                                      from the pages of the almanac
                                                                      into the flower bed the child
                                                                      had carefully placed in front of the house."
                                                                                             Sestina, Elizabeth Bishop
 
Happiness is inside of you!     my little grandmother would say
when I complained of boredom     my malady of choice.
 
She was right, of course     (little grandmothers usually are)
for how else could Maud Lewis     have wrapped her crippled fingers 
 
around a paint brush?     Frozen by rheumatoid arthritis,
fingers curled in a shape called  "pencil-in-cup"    she is smiling
 
in a photograph, at work in her home     a shack in Nova Scotia
without electricity or running water.     Art Naif comes from inside,
 
so Maudie smiles     creating scenes of life in miniature,
doll-house size figures     waiting for a train on snow-coated
 
earth, the train rolling through town     on wheels
that resemble peppermint candies.     Smoke from the steam
 
engine's chimney      puffs out the train's arrival
as a blue-suited conductor calls out     Prochain arret les amis! --
 
"Next stop folks! -- it's Marshalltown!"     & lovely are the ladies
in big-skirted dresses, memories of Victoriana     in yellow and pink.
 
One woman stands     with a gentleman in a top hat,
his bright orange muffler     warming his neck, though its ends
 
are whipped by a winter wind...
                                                             &  the bells that the children
​
could hear were inside them...     Did Maudie Lewis
hear them, listening for sleigh bells     as she painted the town
 
and its old-fashioned people?     Or dream down
a memory of horses and sleighs?
                                                              High above the train stop
 
a small white church     is perched on the horizon,
where the trees, tall and straight     are a forest militia -- pines
 
for the pining --     for a holiday journey with horses
and sleigh;     and look who's coming to meet the train's schedule --
 
someone with a dog sled; the animal's outline     (the back
of his head)     a folk art edition of Batman's visit, ears perked up
 
to help Maudie Lewis     as she paints Nova Scotia.
Soon more snow will be falling     and the train will be moving
 
but there's no end to the journeys
                                                                where Maudie's art takes her,
                                                                    transforming her pain
                                                                       with child-like perception.
 
Laurie Newendorp
 
An appreciator of Folk Art's view of nature, both simple and complex, Laurie Newendorp can understand why Maud Lewis's neighbours in Marshalltown felt her to be a special person. To create in her body's crippled state must have been a motivating source of happiness for her, why her art was evaluated as "coming from a place of happy memories."  Recipient of numerous Ekphrastic Challenge acceptances, Newendorp's book, When Dreams Were Poems, is based on the significance of poetry in art and life. Folk Art is often childlike, "And the bells that the children could hear..." is a quote from Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas In Wales." 
 
**

Childhood Memories
 
Maud Lewis painted her magnificent painting Train Through Town in 1967, the year of Montreal's World Expo. The year that takes me into a past that is still very present. The year the world opened up to us; the year the world came to us.
 
With its vibrant contrasts of hot and cold, Train Through Town makes winter speak, and warm me with childhood memories that the painting brings to life: Mr. Charbonneau who took me for a ride after a magnificent snowfall with his impressive horse seen through my child's eyes;my grandfather who took me to the station to see the freight train go by, never a passenger train.
 
The carpet of snow, painted by Maud Lewis, seems soft under the hooves of the horses and their cart. The carpet of snow contrasts with the solidity of the rails supporting the train. Light and fragile sleighs, strong and agile horses. Imposing and solid train cars with the horsepower of the locomotive pulling them to the great joy of travelers.
 
Maud Lewis painted Train Through Town just three years before her death. A rich and fabulous heritage.
 
Jean Bourque
 
Jean Bourque lives in Montreal, province of Quebec. He is French-speaking and a retired specialist teacher. As a retiree, one of his plans is to learn English.
 
**

To Maud Lewis Regarding Train Through Town
 
You blur as if through children's eyes
the stirring joy of their surprise
at waking to the snowy white
of fledgling winter taking flight
 
where barren tree and bravely those
who face the wind in bundled clothes
are there —as rumbling train departs--
to welcome home the kindred hearts
 
who share the soul of town remote
where misted eyes will rightly dote
on distant spire that speaks to hope
alive and well in those who cope
 
where simple will of faith prevails
as steed and steel recarve its trails.
 
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.
 
**

Time Travel on Canvas

More than just a pretty scene, more than an artist’s brushwork evoking a time long past, I know this scene because I once traveled there, to that past place. As surely as Maud Lewis did with brush, Mother DeSales, a woman nearing ninety in 1958 when she reigned over the study halls of my fifth-grade classroom, Mother DeSales took me skating with her in one of the small towns just outside of Pittsburgh, when snow covered everything. She was not deemed well enough to teach any longer, but she loved being with students and while we worked on our assignments, she talked to us.

I loved her visits, moving from my usual seat in the middle of the classroom to the front so I could hear her soft voice guiding back into her past , those few who were not secretly reading magazines or napping at their desks. It was cold outside; frost flowers decorated the large windows on the windy side of the building. Mother had a slack shawl around her bent shoulders. She leaned forward over the desk. Eyes twinkling in the bit of her little wrinkled face visible in the wimple, the room grew quiet, and she began to speak. I wondered which tale of her childhood she would tell. She usually talked about her calling to the sisterhood, but on that frosty winter day in 1958 she opened up another chapter of her life to us—her childhood, when on a frigid day like this she and her friends went ice skating at a local pond.

Her smile seemed to erase the wrinkles, and I saw her face, fresh and smooth, pink with cold, laughing, laughing. This dear lady who needed our help to manage the stairs up to our classroom, talked of walking past the train station, leaping into snow banks with her friends, watching a horse drawn sleigh carry the minister to church to get ready for Christmas, making snowballs to throw at the boys, as they waited for the train to pass through the main part of town so they could finish the walk across the tracks to the pond.

In her breathy voice she described how,  braids swaying behind her, she danced on the ice once there, her steel blades making figure eights. Dancing, stomping her feet as she waited for the train to pass, racing, making snowballs, playing “crack the whip,” and I was there with her.

When the bell rang for the study hall to end, I leapt up from my seat to help Mother down the steps and back to the convent. I wanted to hear more about her day. I didn’t want to give up the scene of horse-drawn sleigh, the train coming. I could smell the smoke, feel the hard snowballs, now, those were just her hands clasping mine as we navigated the short walk back to her place by the window where she watched the modern world go by,  a much less interesting place in my estimation than the one she knew as a child. I think even with her weak eyes, she knew which of us were listening to her.

I wanted to ask, “what colour was your hair then?” But I did not. Crossing the yard back to the convent, the magic thread to her past was wound back inside her again. I gave her a hug as she settled into her chair to wait until the next time she was needed in the classroom and I returned to long division, classmates talking of movie stars.

It's been years since I lived that moment, felt the magic of the past coming alive in Mother’s voice. This painting brought back both the magic of that day and also allowed me to travel once again into Mother DeSales’ childhood.

I wonder if Maud Lewis knew Mother DeSales or if she, Maud Lewis, simply also knows the secret of creating a past so alive we can step into it. After all, such time travel is the natural landscape of artists, poets, and older women whose eyes still sparkle with youth.

Joan Leotta

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Internationally, including in The Ekphrastic Review, published as essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a two-time nominee (fiction and poetry) for Pushcart and Best of the Net. As a story performer she offers folktale programs and a one woman show, Louisa May Alcott Gives an Author Talk. You can find her on Facebook, Joan Leotta, or contact her at [email protected] 
 
**

Jeannie E. Roberts
 
Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of several books, including The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs.  
 
**

With Arthritis Hands
 
With arthritis hands like balls of knotted wool
Maud Lewis painted just what she liked.
With paint squeezed straight from the tube
On boards of wood, she would cut herself
 
Her miniature artworks are a means of self-expression.
Of her Ohio, Nova Scotia life out in the wilderness
She loved the railroad outside the family home.
The Baptist church appeared against the clouds.
 
Her blue shadows, images painted in the snow,
Show a willingness to live and survive.
No, you can't give up out here!
You got to smile and look up.
Nothings impossible
If you learn that subsistence is a painter's gift.
 
Maud loved the hustle and bustle of the locomotive.
The people thereabouts where she would sell fish
And she would sell painted Christmas cards
Life was tough, but painting was a means to uplift.
Others and, more importantly, herself, soul and body.

Mark Andrew Heathcote
 
Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. His poems have been published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. He is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed.
 
**

Trained Through Need

The Poor Farm watchman not alone,
in keeping eye out, on the doors,
for her of nature, entry point,
to jewels’ sparkle in the drab.
Provincial scenes of childhood still,
nostalgic, optimistic themes,
just as the first sales, door-to-door
of Christmas cards, her sense of cents.

He peddled fish as she sold cards,
her wish to expand popular,
so beaverboards and cookie sheets
were joined with Masonite as base.
A white background, infilled from tube--
so primary, no mix or blend,
arthritic size, not stretcher plied,
to even pride in White House size.

How apt that frame of postage stamp--
the plays, films, music followed on--
as did museums, folk art schemes
in Nova Scotia where she lived.
So much was grim except the bright
alighting on the vibrant seen;
thus folk break out of poverty,
through need, trained creativity.

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
 
**
​
15 Dec 1850
 
Dear Mam by the grace of God I arrived safely here in Philadelphia the crossing on the ship was most dreadful many perished from the fever red with rash and lice and delirium I live in a room in Kensington Street with Aunt and Uncle and the six Cousins every night I pray for you all to come through the great hunger o Mam! to see Norristown from the train so bright and cheerful a place it was great craic to watch the pony sprinting the gentleman away up over the snow and sparkle to the church it made me think when of a Sunday young Tommy O’Neill passed on his horse Branna and tipped his hat to me you wouldn’t credit it Mam America is covered with gold even on locomotives and houses and windows and ladies dresses it must be dreadful heavy I miss you Mam maybe someday please God we’ll meet again tell Da I’ll bring him a long smooth scarf the colour of sunrise and you a fine warm wool pink coat with a fur collar I’ll get with all the easy gold I’ll be finding here in America your loving daughter Mary Jane Gallagher 

Janice Scudder
 
Janice Scudder lives in Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Prose Poem.
 
**
 
Traveling Through the Snow: a Scene
 
In this scene, people trust one another, leave their
            doors unlocked, to be sure. And there’s
beauty on the snow-laden hillside; in this
            scene, trains begin to replace the 
horse, but of course if we look anew, we might see
            other changes too. (I vowed
not to wax eloquent about the good ole days.) But
 
since you heard the train coming through, lets
            look again at the young woman in her gown--
see, she has suitcases at hand and is leaving the town; her 
            sister must go alone in the sleigh, up the slope
on her way to the church. I hope
 
there’s been no falling out. How have they parted,
            one from the other? And how smartly does
the vicar welcome the one at the door? She surely
            arrives shivering and wet, but warms to the gold of the
candlelight; she awaits the Good News—(it’s truly quite old)
            but oh, so reassuring to hear! The cheer
 
of the scene as the New Year approaches—the scene
            as cozy as a mini-hut, a laced glove, or a cup 
of hot chocolate set in the snow—it lets us know 
life continues well beyond the things new industry
brings, past wars and rumors
 
of wars, and other such matters. It scatters our fears
            and relaxes the stresses. We could, if we like, 
simulate, of course: hire horses and sledges and sew us
            long dresses. We could go back in time and 
pretend. Yet some things remain forever the same--
            the snow is still snow. (And the two sisters will 
forgive one another and mend, I know.)
 
Carole Mertz
 
Carole Mertz has poetry in various journals and anthologies. She's happy to be included in Luzajic's Starry Night collection. Her review of Saunier's The Wheel will appear in the January issue of World Literature Today. She resides with her husband in Ukrainian Village, a lively area of Parma, Ohio, where the youth paint scenes on the exterior of enterprises.
 
**

Train of Thoughts Through the Mind’s Town

The train ferries the warmth of firewood
and the pale siren of smoke into the soft morning.
Breathe in the swirl of mist, the pure drift of calm.
Older thoughts alight at their stop
and newer ones occupy their place.
Faith and dreams and second chances
clothed in pink and yellow gowns, brown overcoats
and orange mufflers, colour the present
while the past shrinks into pale blue shadows.
The town holds on its strong shoulders
the mantle of delicate snow.
The horse draws, through the white wilderness,
the sled of promise – tomorrow’s vermilion-yellow.
The bare tree stretches its arms to touch the sky,
as the sunshine of spring clothes its limbs of winter.
The train chugs along its tracks to the highway on the west,
makes the right turn, into the doorway of the distant future.
Emeralds and jades flourish in a forest
below the cerulean horizon of hope.

Preeth Ganapathy

Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published or are appearing in several magazines such as The Orchards Poetry Journal, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and various other journals. Her microchaps A Single Moment, Purple— have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for the 2023 Best Spiritual Literature.
 
**

Simply Put 
 
It was a simpler time
the way I remember it
and our bright little town,
flat out uncomplicated 
 
no harsh contrasts 
or stark shadows,
no hints of decay 
or vanishing points.
 
In a way, everything 
seemed to stack up
almost magically
with fanciful stories
 
of the couple no one knew
but everyone wanted to be,
and the ever-hopeful figure
waiting at the station 
 
the thrill of a train filled
with adventurous dreams
set amidst the smooth 
homespun snow
 
a horse and carriage
flying uphill and appearing
to be leaping over a cloud
of smoke from the train
 
an evergreen hilltop
and homes on the hill
looking like bird houses
up in our favorite tree
 
the cat, who cast a soft 
bluebird shadow,
overseeing it all
from the catbird seat.
 
Linda Eve Diamond
 
Linda Eve Diamond is an award-winning poet whose latest publication is The Art of Listening Anthology, a free collection of listening-themed poetry and visual arts by more than 60 creative contributors. Find her website at http://LindaEveDiamond.com and The Art of Listening at https://www.lindaevediamond.com/art-of-listening.
 
**

The Memories We Keep
 
No one-horse sleighs ever dashed
through the snow of my childhood.
Tidewater Virginia was too warm for that.
 
What little snow we got was more likely
to show up in February when camellias
and daffodils were already in bloom.
 
We enjoyed our own holiday magic­ –
sailboats strung with Christmas lights
that sparkled in the harbor.
 
My favorite holiday memory is the one
Mama saved for me. There’s no way I
could remember being two.
 
The noise in the kitchen grew louder
and louder. Parents, grandparents,
aunts, and uncles crowded the smoky room.
 
The clink of ice and bawdy laughter
almost drowned me out, but Mama raised
a finger to her lips and pointed to me.
 
In the living room, I knelt in front
of the Christmas tree, tiny palms pressed
together, praying to Baby Jesus.
 
Silence. The adults wiped their eyes.
 
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. She has now lived more than half her life in Kansas City. 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.

**

sightseeing
 
the past as we paint
it with our memories is
flat, layered, simple
 
surfaces become
parallel, without any
depth, complexity
 
we leave out the con
tradictions that render dim
ensional space-time
 
was the sky so blue?
the snow so white?  the journey
so unobstructed?
 
all the shadows are perfect
ly cast and untouchable
 
Kerfe Roig
 
A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/
 
**
 
Two Worlds
 
Small, arthritic hands
Painting straight out of tubes
Figures, brightly cheerful
Warm in scarves and cosy coats
Sleighs dash jauntily
Up steep hills of virgin snow
Firs in immaculate, pure white cuffs
Stand sentinel while trains huff and puff.
 
A life of poverty, of limitation
Your daughter adopted, fate unknown
Peddling fish and paintings
A world of pain and loss
Yet you created a cosmos
Of hope where joy is boss.
 
Sarah Das Gupta
 
Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK, who has had work published in many countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. 
 
**
 
Woken by Silence
 
With summer approaching
here in the subtropics,
accompanied by the unavoidable Christmas songs
in the supermarket, tinny voices singing:
Buy, buy, and buy some more…
Red-cheeked Santas with cotton-wool beards
in big red winter coats and hats,
while we are peeling off the layers
in the sudden heat.
 
Before my nostalgic eyes I see winter things:
Christmas markets, horse-drawn sleighs,
pine trees and snow-covered mountains,
steam trains huffing uphill, warm coats,
bobble hats and woolly gloves, fur-lined boots
that crunched their way home, skiing to school…
 
Going further inward, my real snows appear,
those nights of flurries and muted sounds,
the luminous dark, the sky’s crystal lights
sending messages only for a child
to hear, making promises only they can keep.
 
Woken by the silence
at three in the morning,
standing by the window, my breath
clouds the glass pane, the smallness
of my hand that wipes to see the wonder,
only to leave watery droplets.
 
The world is slumbering under
its new white blanket.
I hear the earth breathing,
In--
Out--
In--
Out--
calm and at peace. Finally at rest, preparing
the succulent feast of spring.

Rose Mary Boehm
 
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She is a Pushcart and Best of Net nominee. Her eighth book, LIFE STUFF, has been published by Kelsay Books (November 2023). A new MS is brewing, and a new fun chapbook has been scheduled for publication in 2025. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
 
**
 
Sparks

Blue light sparking off the wheels of subway cars in New York, flashing in the gloom of the tunnel, glowing in my sight like little embers of hope, little flecks of immortal beauty in the sad, dark city, blue like the sky when night is in the process of falling, blue like a river that might flood and wash everything clean. In Queens, when it snowed, the wheels would spark off the subway rails with a blue light that flitted inside of me like a flash of recollection of something I had always known.

Then one time in Italy, just a couple of days before the end of the 20th century, I was riding on a train at night as it climbed up into the Alps, approaching the border with Slovenia. Firs or pines covered with thick, fluffy snow stood motionless on either side of the tracks. I watched spellbound as the blue light sparked and sparked off the wheels. Without these bursts of blue, everything would have been dark. The sparks illuminated the snowy trees, flashing for a split second against snowflakes falling through the air, suspending them, freezing time.

I had left Milan without securing any Slovenian money, nor a Slovenian phrasebook, and my enchanted December train stopped in Ljubljana between three and four in the morning. Apologetically, I handed my cab driver a wad of lire, possibly way too much. None of these problems exist anymore, but those Alpine snowflakes remain suspended in the still blue air.

And then a year later, on a train from Kyiv to Prague, sweeping across a wide Slovak valley that led to the High Tatras mountains. This time it wasn’t snowing and the wheels weren’t sparking much, but there was a full moon and everything was covered in snowy moonlight, or moonlit snow, a snowmoon-blue expanse and then a vertical craggy wall, also of snow and blue. A train, and snow, and blueness, and light. Blue and white, and light and dark, and the ability to move.

Katrina Powers

Katrina Powers decided she was a writer in first grade. The road has been rough and rocky, but she is still a writer. Along that road, she lived overseas, learned languages, and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. She currently lives in Indiana with two small furry animals.
 
**

Picture Perfect?

I wasn’t in a brand new eggnog-yellow coat
and toasty mitts, bearing bountiful gifts
in overflowing designer suitcases.

I wasn’t waving at welcoming neighbours,
beyond excited to be in this wonderland, 
for this season of inglenook warmth.

I wasn’t blinking in pristine sunlight
as snow cloaked gentle hills, skies carolled
and the whole town gleamed.

No, I was forced from home against my will
in threadbare jeans and coat, penniless,
bone-weary, stomach growling.

I’d drained my savings, yet boats and hopes 
sank, trains bellowed and fumes belched 
in biting rain, minus twenty, darkness.

All my plans for life uprooted.
Like a horse rearing up. Lke a train crash. 
Like logs mowing me down to a cold shadow.​

Helen Freeman

Helen Freeman loves trying her hand at some of these challenges and then reading the different interpretations chosen by editors. She currently lives in Edinburgh and her instagram is @chemchemi.hf 

**
​
Depot
 
The old gothic station
now stores appliances:
washing machines and ranges.
Such merch the natural outcome
of a passion for plumbing;
run by the son of a son
of the banker named Bowen,
who once warned my mother
her account was overdrawn
while standing at the four corners
in front of the fountain
before it was melted down
for ammunition.
Once upon, green lined the sweep
of lines carting lions, gymnasts and clowns
carried to town in cars swirled with gold
tangerine and crimson, dotting the scene
on their way to the fairgrounds.
And ladies in their pheasant-feathered finery,
transported to tea in the city,
bid farewell to the men from the armory
proud in their khaki,
while they passed the pandemic
crisscrossing their path.
Time was, the station welcomed
the woods, maple and poplar, cast into caskets
at the factory next to the tumbling tracks.
With smokestacks of coal spewing their ash.
Ashes to ashes. All to the caskets!
The station, a building storing appliances,
now clad in graffiti waiting for business.
 
Cynthia Dorfman
 
Cynthia Dorfman draws from memories of her childhood and depicts changes in the world since then. William Blake's "Jerusalem" inspired her to write "Depot" in response to the Maud Lewis painting. Her work has appeared before in The Ekphrastic Review and elsewhere.  
 
​