 After the Walk, by Lyn Aylward (England) 2023. Click on image for artist site. 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 After the Walk, by Lyn Aylward. Deadline is October 11, 2024. 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. 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 AYLWARD 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, October 11, 2024. 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.
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 Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid, by Johannes Vermeer (Netherlands) ca. 1670–72 The Sun Ray Painting "Okay, the last thing left is the painting,” the maid told Fiona. “I want it to stay in the house, it is in the perfect spot. The sunrise and sunset gleam, glow on it like a heavenly light selecting it for more,” she replied to the maid. Fiona had become violently ill and was deteriorating fast. In her final moments she and her maid, Jolie, were writing her will. They gave the animals and part of the gold to Fiona’s son, and the clothes and the other half of the gold went to her daughter. Jolie, however, did not know Fiona planned to give the property, including the painting, to her. They had grown up together as kids and knew each other inside out out. She always thought the sun rays on the painting were like Jolie, a ray of joy adding to the dull. Fiona wanted this to be her final farewell and thank you for all that Jolie did for her. She wrote it in her will when Jolie left the room and died shortly the next morning, while the sunrise was on the painting. Tessa Lawrence Tessa Lawrence is 15 and goes to high school in Ohio. She likes to read, write, and play basketball. ** The Missive and the Messenger She writes, perhaps, in the language of lovers- Her hurrying hand, hot with urgent grace, Pens her impatient passion that hovers In ribbony rivulets of ink traced Across the empty paper's sunlit space. The other woman waits, a messenger With listless boredom furrowing her face. Her eyes flit from floor to window, hands spurred To complete her lady's letter for her; But she refrains, and prepares herself to Deliver the missive to the monsieur Whose eager hands await the overdue Words that tease, scold, and seek flirtatious play- Utterances of feelings far away. Stefanie Kate M. Watchorna Stefanie Kate M. Watchorna is the author of the short story "Koivu," which was commended in the 2022 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. She is also the author of "An Encomium to the Victors," which was a finalist for the 2021 Giovanni Bertacchi VIII Premio Internazionale Di Letteratura, and "The Glory in Rome," which won third place in the 2022 Giovanni Bertacchi IX Premio Internazionale Di Letteratura. ** The Tug of Other Rooms There’s trouble on the cobbles, I can hear it. There is light and I’m a moth, and though my lady locks the day away, I’m straining at the bit; I hear the merchants’ calls to market, I could make it - if she hurried - with my basket, tuck the larkspur in in bunches, rearrange it on her table when, much later, she will heed her sleepy room. I hush the gloomy day away - it’s only rain again - and take up paper: paper boat, you go your way; canals are highways, and my thoughts can fly to Spain or to some other sunny clime: I have a rush of things to say. There’s love in looping cursive, in a tongue that isn’t mine that makes me bold, that lets me enter hallowed halls by stealth, a language of connection for my friends cannot speak Dutch, nor I the murmured mews of French. I sing a silent song of city streets; she’s sneaking envelopes to places she has never seen except in black and white: The white outside of clouds is ripe, my foot is tapping, oh, if only she would open this old window. The only way in which we two are like is in our dreaming, in how neither one of us is rooted here: this cosy room cannot contain us. The flowers are for me as much as her, reminder tiny of the fact that fields exist; and if it weren’t for those old paintings in the hall of cattle lowing, then the hazy fields I’m storing in my memory might have faded. Go, letter, sing your Latin, swift as Hermes, conjure Rome in homing syllables: I’ve found a patchwork school in correspondence. Let my missives not betray me - how I sometimes need to use my dictionary - let them sit in quiet magic, light the writing desks of other ladies sharing my unerring ache for less domestic praise: the ache is dulling; in its place this new cascade of ever kinder commendations for my mind will tide me over ‘til the next epistle wings its way to me. Caitlin Prouatt Caitlin is a Brisbane-born, Oxford-based Latin and Greek teacher. When not tutoring or looking after her toddler, Caitlin writes poetry, with a particular interest in how rhythm can contribute to an image. Much of her poetry centres on her experiences of being a parent, but she also often returns to Classical themes. She enjoys having a go at the Ekphrastic Challenge to hone her craft. ** pigmentum that first summer, the sky was always azurite. it was the year of riotous blossoming; hydrangeas spilled in clouds and waves across the arboretum and along the stone lanes in shades of weldand smalt and madder lake, the palette my mother wanted for your bouquet – wanted in vain, because we married in April and spring arrived too late. but you folded your hennaed hand over hers and twenty minutes before the bells tolled you walked into the forest when no one was looking. I was halfway to the trees when you emerged laden with wildflowers in lead-tin yellow and carmine and indigo, entrusting an armful to my mother as you passed, and married me with the hem of your verdigris dress dyed ivory black in mud and yellow ochre with pollen and all night long I watched you, spinning like a galaxy in the arms of your sisters, laughing up at me with a face of smudged charcoal and fading vermillion, and there has never been anyone more ethereal than you, not in all the years of your god’s green earth. after decades spent tethered, you wanted to roam, and so we climbed until there was not much further left to go, and there we nested, in that cabin of red ochre flagstones and lead white windows and facing the valley, the bedroom whose ceiling you painted ultramarine with a smattering of stars. that July, when the days were longest and you spent them outside, I’d hear you singing from a mile away, well before you were within sight. surfacing from the vivianite haze of conifers and ancient oak, your hair was a silver blaze; by the time you’d crossed the pasture, you shone like a comet, fool’s gold and lazuli and russet smelting down from the sky to frame your face. whenever you kissed me that season, your eyes were never the same colour twice, tinged every time with an incandescence I am still struggling to name. Lalini Shanela Ranaraja Lalini Shanela Ranaraja makes art in a wilderness of places, most recently Katugastota (Sri Lanka), Rock Island (Illinois) and the California Bay Area. She has written about defiant women, red-tailed hawks, best beloveds, mothertongues and luminous worlds for Wildness, Hunger Mountain, Strange Horizons, Ekstasis and others. Discover more of her work at www.shanelaranaraja.com. ** Out of Focus Placid, pellucid, private? Look again. That pearly woman is in fact my aunt, Writing another list. You like the pane I’m sure – the way the light comes in aslant, So clean. And I must be her modest maid, Lost in my maiden dreams, cool as a plant, Clothed to the neck and wrists. But maids get paid! Look at her scribbling: Lemons, herrings, cheese. The tiles are hard. Notice that carpet, laid Over the table: Turkish, if you please, Thick as a pelt. Oh, Anneke, don’t mope! One morning I’ll jump up there, bare my knees And dance my hoops off. We must make more soap (I must, that is). Now squint behind her head: I know it off by heart. He stretched his scope There, Meister Jan: no more pale drapes; instead Two half-dressed girls, a baby, and – quite plain – Two bodies bare as Adam! And more bread. Or maybe Eve. I’d ask him to explain, But I’m a girl. Yes, Aunt. And I’ve a brain. Passionless, prudish, patient? Look again. Ruth Baker ** Longing How lucky you are: the light shines on the words I whisper as I gaze slant through the window half-hidden from light I was told to avoid. You consulted the book then discarded it, and I, I divulged the words of love, those you are too refined to form even in the movement of your lips. You can write, but not feel. Your lace cap and pearls, they engage but do not pierce. You have me stand in brown, in shadow, when I might have sat in blue velvet fronting you as teacher, giving you the sentiment I whisper now, heart splitting. Only my gaze frees me, frees me to dream of elsewhere, somewhere I may learn to write. Carol Coven Grannick Carol Coven Grannick is a poet and children's author whose verse for the growing and the grown appears in a variety of print and online journals, including Loch Raven Review, Synkroniciti, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Babybug, Ladybug, The Dirigible Balloon, and elsewhere. Her novel in verse, REENI'S TURN, debuted in 2020 (Regal House Publishing), and her series of ekphrastic poems appears in After Light Darkness Rose, Another Day, an independently published Artist Book. Her new blog celebrates and shares the presence and meaning of poetry in everyday life: https://www.bitsoftheworldinverse.com. ** After the Pearl Earring Went Missing It’s a bit tiresome to stand frozen in one place for so long, but maids have little choice. I have a hard time remembering which hand is crossed on top. Both my feet and half-smile ache. Still, looking out at the sunshine, watching the children play and birds fly about the canal beats scrubbing floors. I’m lucky to be the prettier maid in the house – now that earring girl is gone. Poor Cook must handle the kitchen alone. Mistress, of course, is not actually writing a letter. She must stay perfectly still like me, though she may be composing an apology in her head. Let’s face it, we all miss THAT girl. Mistress just never expected to. Master valued the girl’s mastery for mixing paints and stretching canvas. Now he must do it all himself if we’re to keep a roof over head and food on the table. Mistress shows her patience by offering for us to pose. How foolish to pitch the girl out without proof of the theft! Imagine my surprise to find a pearl under the girl’s bed last week. I decided it best to drop it in the canal, not stir up more trouble. I’m keeping a secret for Master, too. While we pose at the window like ladies of leisure, the children left a penny, a crayon, and a wad of paper on the floor beside the table. It’s not visible from where we pose, but Mistress will be mortified that he captured the mess on canvas. Alarie Tennille Alarie Tennille graduated from the first coed class at the University of Virginia, where she picked up her B.A. in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. Retired now, Alarie delights in having more time to read, write poetry, and hang out at The Ekphrastic Review. Her latest poetry collection, Three A.M. at the Museum, has joined her earlier books on The Ekphrastic Bookshelf. Please visit her at alariepoet.com. ** Vermeer on Main Street America I’m stuck in my boss’s office while she finishes writing a letter. “Almost done,” she says, “then you can run it to the post office.” Her pen scratches at the stationery while I stand staring out the ground-floor window at Main Street. That’s when I hear a low rhythmic rumble and a distant blare of brass. Soon a marching band parades into view to the quick cadence of a familiar tune. “Hey, look,” I say, pointing. “Shh,” my boss says, “almost done.” As the drum major leads the way, I open the window, lean out, and shout: “What’s the occasion?” “It’s Johannes Vermeer’s birthday,” he says, turning to show me a painting in his hands. “Cool,” I say, “but then why are you playing a Sousa march?” But the drum major has already passed by, trailed by twirlers who send their batons spinning skyward like tiny silver satellites. Flutes and piccolos trill high, saxophones and trumpets resound, and the sousaphones’ flared forward-facing bells swing side to side in unison. The percussion section brings up the rear, and each boom of the bass drum rattles the windowpanes. Then the rows of plumed hats recede down Main Street, and the music fades. “Done,” my boss says, handing me a sealed beige envelope. When I step outside, I glance left toward the post office, but turn right instead, in pursuit of the waning melody. DK Snyder DK Snyder’s work appears in Unbroken Journal, Cease, Cows Magazine, Shotgun Honey, and elsewhere. She is a writer, a lawyer, and lives in Virginia. ** Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid So I sez to him I sez that’s lovely fish, I bet rain is on its way tonight, did you see those clouds unless Hille just forgot to clean the glass again, the butcher’s boy came around twice No one forgets a fletch of bacon unless they’re in love, did Maritje pass your other note to her mistress, lovely turban, earring just a bit much but the heart, I know, the heart wants What it wants, miss, if you will pardon my saying so, true if you hurry and finish I’m sure as eggs is eggs I can cross the straat before dark and your father returns to call you for dinner, it’s fish tonight, miss, it’s Them I was saying, if you remember, what looked alive and swimming, a basket’s as good as the sea to a blind herring and, are you even listening, no don’t write herring, sorry miss, it’s just that She is at her window across the straat, the lace curtain pulled back, yes, by her pale hand, miss, no don’t start over, I promise she’s waiting just like the butcher’s boy at the kitchen door, hurry, fold it kiss it only I will know Angela Kirby Angela Kirby earned a BA in Creative Writing from Duke University. She is a 2024 Atlanta Journal International Poetry Merit Awardee, 2022 Second Prize Winner of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and two-time winner of the Anne Flexner Memorial Prize. Publications include Nimrod International Journal, Roanoke Review, The Light Ekphrastic, and Humber Literary Review. ** The Letter (The Dutch tulip bulb market bubble was one of the most famous market bubbles and crashes of all time. Also known as tulipmania, it occurred in Holland during the early to mid-1600s when speculation drove the value of tulip bulbs to extremes. The rarest tulip bulbs traded for as much as six times the average person’s annual salary at the market's peak.) Anouk stands by, her arms folded, the Delft morning sun stroking both her face and that of her Mistress. It will be some time before the Master is back from his business trip. He took the carriage and two horses. Something big is going on in Amsterdam, and the Master had that worried look on his face. Very worried. Today her Mistress has made a decision. That swashbuckling low-life (that’s what Anouk silently calls him) is only after one thing. No, not that. Money. And her Mistress has a lot of it. The Master has made a fortune with tulip bulbs. He took over her Mistress’ business when they married. It’s hers, really, and ‘low-life’ – Anouk was sure – knew exactly what he was doing, what with his fine words and pretend admiration, his constant attention with small gifts when the Master was out. Anouk had heard rumours from other maids in the market. Her Mistress had always been kind, and Anouk loved her dearly. So, one day she took her courage into both hands (she’d been with her Mistress since she was 13 years old) and the two women had talked. And now her Mistress was writing the letter. It would be a diplomatic masterpiece, not an admission of guilt, but a firm rejection of the money-hunting Mijnheer’s advances, and Anouk would soon leave the house, letter in her apron pocket, and a smile on her face. 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 was three times nominated for a ‘Pushcart’ and once for ‘Best of Net’. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling In The Dark (Cyberwit, July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books, November 2023. A new MS is brewing. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Common Bond Here’s go-between, heart-write insight, strict discipline within the room, indiscipline unfolding soon, an intimate geometry. Floor tiles and lines in vertical - is scripted text sans serif too, as centrigugal test is weighed? Made middle cast, a vocal point, whose lips can tell a tale or two, while middleclass, in brighter light, writes featherlight of daring, do? Maid’s glance anticipatory of stories laid beyond the glass - her fantasies of mistress’ ways mingled with prospects of her own, that smile revealing mind at play. How long her longing arms self-grasp before enfolding supple parts? Desire in mouth and finger tips, does one imagine, one suggest? There’s commonwealth before our eyes; no pandering required it seems. This common canvas bolt with Lute (just as twice thieves bolted, this loot, two versions of Ireland’s free state, which ground was never black and white), uncommon in its derring-do? For what withal can word ‘with’ mean; the servant present, so with her, but not co-author, writing with. Had they conspired, shared confidence, the message, messenger and her? Would both enjoy their wicked days? 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 ** Dancing on their Shoulders, Watchin’ All The Words Go By “Little darlin’, it seems it’s been more than a year since the cold, lonely winter kept sunshine from view, so please, do-do-do draw the curtains wide, dear-- it’s alright. You see, here comes the sun. Let’s renew! See how soft it breaks through without breaking the glass, It’s brilliance unstrain’d, pouring in as if rained from the heavens above upon each of us, lass, twice bless’d by the brightness and warmth it has deigned. Now I’ll take up a pen with more power than a sword-- though I’ll write with a wife’s due compliance to voice love’s refrains, yet with modest accord, while I dance on the shoulders of giants. Sweet ’Melia, don’t wander the streets once it’s gone but stay home, suff’ring megrims the way we girls do, for the feathers and gowns you prefer to put on for a strut through town once nearly ruined me, too. Ken Gosse Author's note on text sources: “Standing on the Corner” is a popular song written by Frank Loesser and published in 1956. The Beatles song “Here Comes the Sun” written by George Harrison, released in 1969. Shakespeare’s poetry from Romeo and Juliet and from The Merchant of Venice. “The pen is mightier than the sword" was coined in these words by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 (also known for “It was a dark, stormy night …) “The shoulders of giants.” Originally from William of Conches in 1123, perhaps best known from Isaac Newton’s 1675 letter. Thomas Hardy’s 1866 poem, “The Ruined Maid.” Ken Gosse prefers to write rhymed, humorous verse using traditional forms. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, since then he has been in The Ekphrastic Review, Pure Slush, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Home Planet News, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years, usually with rescue dogs and cats underfoot. ** Reading Between the Lines Eva is used to waiting. Her whole life is subordinated to her mistress's requirements. She glances at the window to pass the time and sees Pieter the messenger outside. He's waiting for the response to his master's latest love letter. Eva notes how the sun gleams off his gaudy blue satin jerkin and that the feather on his cap is outrageously long, how it flicks up and down with his lively head movements as he jokes with the other serving boys in the yard. She notes his shapely calves in the snowy, showy white hose. At least this time she won't have to chase him away from the kitchen door and the gaggle of giggling scullery maids. That was the time she'd had to search for him to give him her mistress's reply, and she'd found him holding court with a simpering, appreciative audience. Even the old cook, Griselda, had had a girlish red blush high on her cheeks and an unfamiliar rictus that could possibly have been a grin. Eva knows Pieter has a way with the ladies, much like his master. She worries that her mistress has fallen for a rogue, a known womaniser. Her mistress refuses to listen to her father's warnings about Franz de Rooij, twice widowed and looking for a new wealthy bride. Her mistress is on a second draft, wanting to reply with some of the wit and playfulness of the letter Pieter brought her. The first draft is lying crumpled on the floor. Eva's expert eye notes that the tiles need a sweep and a wash. It's something practical to keep those flirty, flighty scullery maids busy. Eva tries not to think too much about the future. She expects she will go with her mistress when, inevitably, she marries Franz de Rooij. Her mistress is almost twenty four and there hasn't been a clamour of other suitors so far. Jan van der Valk, the childhood sweetheart, had been killed at sea and her mistress had been inconsolable until the handsome and urbane Franz came along. Eva knows her mistress, as the only child of a successful merchant, will command a generous dowry. She knows her mistress has already started making an inventory of items for her trousseau. What's the point of worrying when it's out of your control, Eva thinks. Her role is to keep her own counsel. Adept at reading over her mistress's shoulder she knows that de Rooij intends to travel around Europe's finest cities once the marriage contract is finalised. That might be some consolation for leaving behind the security and status of the current household. Another thought insinuates itself as movement outside once again catches her eye. The annoying but somewhat diverting Pieter would be there also. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands. She particularly enjoys ekphrastic writing and has had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review Challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print. ** Daydreaming I wonder what species of bird chirps outside the window, wooing its mate with a nuanced melody? If I had confidence to warble my feelings, perhaps Henry would notice me, I could bring him a kneeler out there in the garden to keep the sandy loam from soiling his trousers and perhaps... Yes m'am, I'm paying attention. 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, 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. ** A Cold Morning with a Warm Story It was a cold winter morning with the maid looking out the window at the fresh snow that had fallen on the ground. Her master was writing a letter to her husband who had left to fight in a war for England and she was concerned for him. The maid was looking at the snow until her master said to her, “If you want Violet, you can leave for the day. I have nothing else to ask you to do.” Violet tilted her head at her master “Are you sure?” Her master chuckled, “I can always call you if something comes up.” Violet looked back out of the window. “I know but since your husband left to fight in the war I like to stay and help you out with little and big things.” Her master stopped writing the letter and looked at Violet, smiling. “Are you saying that I am too old to do normal house chores by myself?” Violet shook her head “No, I just want to make sure you are all good.” Her master laughed at this and pointed at the painting behind them “Do you know the story behind which that painting was made?” Violet looked at the painting for a little bit before replying, “I am afraid not.” Her master got up and walked to the painting saying, “It’s a family painting from my ancestors and that a man had to go to war but the man's wife was pregnant with a child and the man wanted to stay with her, but the woman told her husband that she would be fine and so her husband left for the war, still scared for his love. After the war the woman came to greet them and to show them his new son and he said to his wife that she was right and from there on he never again doubted his wife.” Violet was beside her master as she told the story and after the story Violet smiled and said, “Do you need anything master?” Her master shook her head and so Violet walked to the door and grabbed her coat and left her master’s house. Samuel Verhoff ** Inside/Outside Axis "Not to have love was to accept a kind of death before you began." Anne Perry, A Darker Reality Is her future in the painting on the wall behind her? Like mirrors of the present figures wear Golden Age dress, but in the fore-front, mythically added naked bodies suggest a biblical context, like a new world from the past, a place where a man and a woman could be Adam and Eve in a Genesis without figs, their leaves a coverup Queen Victoria would say was un- necessary. Beneath the painting in the background a young woman sits at a desk where she could be writing a love letter; while her maid, standing to her right, hides her impatience to be walking -- out- side -- through the garden at the exact moment when the land- scape gardener rises from a flower bed where he's planted tulips, red blooms that will bleed their colorful passion onto the petals of white companions -- & he adds purple, a dream of sunset that offers 2-lip gold. Is colour an afterthought in 17th century Dutch Painting? A wish? Words in a letter she, a messenger, is eager to deliver? A world, it seems that is just beginning when love is the heart's notepad. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. Twice nominated for Best Of the Net, she has been honoured multiple times by The Ekphrastic Challenge. ** The Letter The sheer, cream white curtain hung lazily over half the windowsill, parting just enough to reveal the intricate stained glass behind it and the blend of gold and cerulean at the focal point Her housemaid’s low-heeled buckle shoes clicked on the cool tile floor as she shifted her weight from foot to foot Her neck ached from the strain of being hunched over her desk for the entirety of the day Each knot woven into the textured cloth draped over the table tugged on skin of her forearms, As if it had its own opinion of what she should write that it desperately wanted to convey Letting out a frustrated breath, she threw a pointed glance at the useless crumpled letter-writing manual she had cast to the floor in a short-lived moment of melodrama Reasonable explanation as to why the words she intended to write died out on the tip of her pen escaped her, and every drop of ink that happened to make it onto the paper was merely a boiled down rendition of what was in her heart She gently traced her weary fingertips over the dried calligraphy ink his name was coated in at the very top of the letter This was the only component of substance she had come up with that elicited a smile from her pursed lips, but just this once, she was determined to be the instigator of his joy Brilliant rays of light infiltrated the room and demanded her attention, seemingly mocking her struggle with their god-given ability to captivate with ease She carried a sharp tongue rather than a witty one, so she always harboured a deep envy of his ability to conjure a laugh or light conversation out of thin air Suddenly, her pen slid off the thin manilla paper and onto the bothersome table dressing, ripping her out of the daydream that had sieged her mind Looking down defeatedly at her lack of progress, she laid eyes on an entire page covered from top to bottom with the appreciation, confession, and devotion she had been wanting to share with him since the day of their first clandestine meeting Anticipation shook her hands excitedly as she attempted to carefully fold and seal the letter in a crisp, plain envelope sealed with vermillion wax and warm adoration. Anna Hepler Anna Hepler lives in a small suburb of Virginia with fickle weather and beautiful fall foliage. She has a passion for writing poetry and hopes to pursue a career in literature in the future. ** The Letter “Quite a kerfuffle outside,” the maid murmured as she gazed out the window. The other woman, who was sitting down at a table, hummed in response. She was paying utterlty no attention to the chaos outside, completely within her own world while writing a letter. “...Ma’am?” The maid tapped the latter’s shoulder. “Oh! Um, yes, Agatha?” the latter jolted. “I think you should take a gander outside, Miss Adeline.” Adeline lifted herself from her work - literally and mentally - and glanced outside. Upon looking, her eyes locked onto the large fleet marching through the streets. “Blimey,” Adeline murmured. “How on earth did I not hear their cries?” “You’ve been within your own world, Ma’am,” Agatha alluded. “Is this the revolt the men spoke of during supper yesterday?” Adeline pondered, tilting her head with a slight worried expression. “It’s probable.” Both of them watched as the foreign troops continued their march towards the castle. Almost a minute later, they watched their king, James II, flee upon a horse. “...That was quite anticlimatic,” Agatha said with a raise of a brow. “Indeed, Aggie, indeed,” Adeline sighed. “Shall you return to your letter now, Madam Adeline?” Ava Chapin Ava Chapin is a freshman who is a self-proclaimed "writer in progress." ** The Letter I tap my pen on the edge of my hand, waiting for Elizabeth to speak. “But I must decline your offer,” she says. I write the line, wondering if the offers to buy her late father’s estate will ever cease. Nobody believes she can run the estate, and I wonder if she herself has any confidence. The silence stretches out and I turn around. Elizabeth is lost in space, her gaze resting out the window, in some faraway place. I put down the pen. “Start a new letter,” she says. “Accept the offer. We need a fresh start. Things will change.” Anna Svatora  Cycles, by Norval Morrisseau (Canada) 1985. Photo by Jodi Green. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. via Flickr. 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 Cycles, by Norval Morrisseau. Deadline is September 27, 2024. 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. 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 MORRISSEAU 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, September 27, 2024. 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.  The Muster, by Kate Vale (UK) 2024 Passing Is She, bright white in carriage throned, Her troops en masse, strict ranks conform, beneath a Standard pennant flag, as if, as passed, fresh wight in form? Marks fluid, inked, is this tattoo - like passings out to past belong - the military, best of show, prefigured, not as go along. Assembled, gathered on parade, so passing muster, tourist too, the knee high view of passer-by; I hear the sounds, as sight, ring true. Clipped hooves clop, stirrups, reigns that guide? You know that clank - boots, rifles, steel; attest lies with vox populi - Divine right rooted - service zeal? Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Fitzwilliam College, 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 ** All Their Failed Maneuvering The shades are called to the flag raising with muffled drum roll and their moaning but they are always ill prepared to face such murky gray days over and over in the ever growing army of the doomed. Forced to reenact all their failed maneuverings every battle lost. The outcome of each day's war preternatural and predetermined so far beyond the world they thought they knew. 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 such diverse journals as The Rhysling Anthology and Dwarf Stars and Gas Station Famous and Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle. He does not know how to cut and paste but somehow survives on the kindness of others. dan's latest poems may be found at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and dadakuku. ** Forever Changing Painting strong women, in illustrious colours, forever changing. 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. ** Equine The time of year? It wasn’t clear; the age? It could have been a hundred years ago or yesterday; the horses? There was Alfred, great and temperamental, Sally, shy and pawing at the ground, and Blaze, just waiting while the others capered round - he wasn’t bothered - and then bringing up the rear was older Ernie - such a gentleman - and Willow, still so spirited and skittish. Or was it Macedonia? Bucephalus a kicking blur as sun emerged from cloud and shadow quickly licked the ground, and all the others followed suit. It might have been a field not far from here where we threw windfalls when we didn’t know much better, when we wanted just to tempt them to the fence. They cantered and they whinnied and they gloried in the free before the capture when the flags were out - the owners made a day of it - and all was rushing midnight, dappled happiness, a bay in mid-abeyance and a stallion disobedient, a flick of silver tail, a trail of movement that evaded being stilled. Caitlin Prouatt Caitlin is a Brisbane-born, Oxford-based Latin and Greek teacher. When not tutoring or looking after her toddler, Caitlin writes poetry, with a particular interest in how rhythm can contribute to an image. Much of her poetry centres on her experiences of being a parent, but she also often returns to Classical themes. She enjoys having a go at the Ekphrastic Challenge to hone her craft. ** The Musters For War Mustering their courage, mustering their faith, collecting together ready to charge, ready to fight, ready to kill, ready to die ordered in order they’re ready to go. These vassals and workers obeying the king obeying their lord, obeying their masters obeying them all. So strangers kill strangers, friends die the same. It’s when they pass muster that death makes the call to muster the ordered at his command. And when they pass muster, that’s when they’ll charge and that’s when they die over and over over and out in order when ordered again and again and again and again again and again and again. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today’-competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Miasma A swirl of hooves and manes and horse flesh. The swish swash of desperate men mustering the cattle to beat the fire. The sky an eerie yellow, orange and grey sits heavy all around, ominously peppered with ash and silt. There’s a gravity in the air to furrow the brow of the sternest of cowboy. No time to think. No time to muster courage. Act on instinct and a grave fear. And hope like hell that the God of Wind has a change of heart and blows in another direction. Adam Stone Adam lives and loves on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, Australia - Wathaurong land (Balla-wein). He is an award-winning lyricist and emerging author who thoroughly enjoys short story and flash fiction writing. He is a member of Writers Victoria, Geelong Writers Inc and Bellarine Writers. ** The Muster No gleaming uniforms with gold buttons, no smart hats to match. ‘Just’ a gaggle of tired warriors who came home, who battled it out with the enemy’s tired warriors. But they were left standing. torn cloth, captured head gear, gas masks and shields. Hundreds of young men left unprotected on the muddy earth, in water-logged trenches. A wind assaults those heroes, a wind moves their rags. A single small flag held high-- is it theirs or the one they grabbed as a last moment of triumph from the defeated soldiers? Their queen rides past, inspecting what is left from a once strong and voiceful battalion, young men in their prime roaring their defiance at the outset of their long march towards the killing fields. Will they learn to love again? 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 was three times nominated for a ‘Pushcart’ and once for ‘Best of Net’. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling In The Dark (Cyberwit, July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books, November 2023. A new MS is brewing. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** To Kate Vale Regarding The Muster Here gathered are your traces cast of yesterdays now glazed as past where stoic stares that never blinked at future rendered indistinct bespoke the faith that fear will call to fierceness that becomes a pall to.evil that would shackle soul to absence of the self control that is its nature by design as image of its source divine compelling fearless sacrifice of life and limb as precious price preserving justice under law as strength the free and brave will draw. 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. ** Worthy You don’t want to go there said the voices inside my head. But where is there? I wondered, not for the first time. How does one find out where one does not want to go? I came when called but now I am gone. No company follows me; nor does time. I keep casting nets of summoning but nothing remains inside except the outlines of stars, the silhouettes of the shadows of souls that I feel but cannot see. It’s not nothing; nor is it nowhere. But where is it? and why? They said fly the flag. But they knew nothing of wings. Flags are heavy with a hollow silence that reeks of ghosts. They are held by the gravity of earthbound bones, laid over and over again like sacrificial lambs over millions of unlived lives. I came when called but now I am gone. endless bodies spill out, one after the other, bearing the crossroads-- sailing over the earth’s edge into the absence of light 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/. ** After Kate Vale’s The Muster Young flowers grow in innocent sunburst spring gardens, HERE they thrive in yellows, reds and orange though there COMES a price for maturing, mute and muted, as drab as THE next marching flower purple, gray, colours muster together a BIG hup, hup, hup uniform command toward one more ceaseless PARADE. Daniel W. Brown Author's note: The words “Here Comes The Big Parade” are by Phil Ochs. 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. ** Muster Must go to war looking good for some reason Scare them off Attract them Feel your Sunday best When you meet them Muster the manteaux The boots on your ground The cutting edge uniform It matters This wool may soon unravel the last thread of civilization This dress Designed to die for. Stien Pijp Stien Pijp lives in the Dutch country side. She is a linguist who works in the field of aphasia and care. A dreamy person who likes to hang around, to read and walk her dog. ** Curious Choice “The Muster.” Where to hang you? Odd tapestry of cold sunshine, Restive lancers, grim polearms. This choice will bemuse my friends. Manly strutting, cocksure bravado! Not my usual fare. Entry wall? An earthy rumpus of welcome. Inviting gusty, good-natured set-tos? Maybe the kitchen? My stews of Ragoos, Bigos, Stifados—burping, bumping. Echoing Bays, Pintos, Draughts—snorting, kicking. Ah, the library. Sink into soft leather, mind purling. Dissolve into dust of Crusades. Or the bath? Deliquesce amid steamy bubbles? How will apricot vapor recast tangy metallic dust? Then again, perhaps the office. To do pendant battle: paperwork vs infidel. Yes! The office! Place of my tantrums, snorting, pawing of earth! Where paperwork bites, stings, nettles Until I whine and bray in a dander. I know why I bought you! Anna Gallagher Anna Gallagher earned a bachelors degree in English and a masters degree in liberal arts from University of Delaware. She has enjoyed reading poetry all her life. After retirement she has tried some new challenges, including poetry writing! ** faire weather a rain-streaked window dulls the pennants blurs riders and mounts assembled on the field no need to attend it never changed an autumn pageant games and mock jousting today they would return mud spattered and loud today the field is muddy some horses uneasy it is a long tradition boys claim manhood with sweat and bruises sit proud in their saddles except once when horses fell and riders were thrown stories vary but all agree it was raining that long-ago day I watch from the window remember he was only twelve Kat Dunlap Kat Dunlap grew up in Norristown PA and now resides in Massachusetts where she is a member of the Tidepool Poets of Plymouth. She received a BA in English from Arcadia University and holds an MFA from Pacific University. She edited two college writing publications as well as the Tidepool Poets Annual. For many years she was Director of the National Writing Project site at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and is currently the co-owner of Writers Ink of MA. Her chapbook The Blue Bicycle is being prepared for an autumn launch. ** Muster Haiku All able-bodied men must fight for realm in mist – girls eyes in tears. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and is a keen TER contributor. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni. ** Riding Farther, Beyond Milady, will you ride? Will you travel into the deepest dunes, far from ephemeral water's side? Others, bright popinjays, set their sights towards their homelands in the distant west. Their journeys are much different to ours. They will merely cross distance. We travel farther, to the realms beyond. Milady, do you yearn for your home? Does it call your spirit, summon your very soul? Ours is a home found in the harshest climes, far from markets, far from towns, far from pooled water. Far away from this harrying bustle, the cries that arise around us; the herdsmen gathering their hardy flocks and the wranglers of our steadfast mounts readying all for the muster. We travel far, deep, beyond. We'll leave this wadi fed oasis, a temporary convenience of the physical world. The only sounds we'll hear are the songs of the wind, the sand, and a heart beating deep within each traveller's breast. Lean voices will sometimes rise in stilted silty conversations, prayers, invocations and curses - spare, by necessity only. The sun, the stars and the moon, and our inner thoughts will keep us company, be our guide and our compass. No paper map can capture the shifting sands. Only those who know the deep desert dare attempt our journey. Travelling beyond will lend much time for inner contemplation. Already, perched high in your black headdress and robes, with your stillness, you are apart from the hoi polloi, separate to the scene. Milady, are you ready? Milady, will you ride? Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer living in the UK Midlands. She's had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print. ** The Mind’s Command before the start of the Battle of Senses The enemy is advancing. Row after row, wave after wave. They will crash into our shores in some time. Their sharpened weapons flash like lightning in the purple sky. Their battle-cries rent the pewter air. But fret not, my dear men. We sweat in peace, in meditation. We have sharpened the saws of our breath, emptied our thoughts and sat in stillness. Mark my words, we will not bleed during this fight. Part the grey curtains of fear. Stand your ground. Mount your horses and elephants to travel away from the land of doubt. Let your courage spiral up and touch the uncharted azure of the skies. Let the spire of your strength silhouette this morning of glory. Let the cathedral of your past be a monument to your faith. Let the russet pennants of discipline ripple through the halcyon winds of the present. It is time. Time for us to emerge from behind the shape-shifting shadows into the open air and breathe, my men. Breathe. Breathe this air, fragrant with victory. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published in several magazines such as Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Star 82 Review, Panoply Zine, Visual Verse, Quill & Parchment, Shotglass journal, Sparks of Calliope, Tiger Moth Review, The Sunlight Press, Ink, Sweat & Tears 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. ** A muster of memories Emerging from the mist are figures blurred by memory. A surge of energy sweeps these bodies, becoming and un-becoming, an army of the unseen. Colours create contours and shadows stretch into shapes as the past and future clash in the pervasive present. They move but don't, their essence felt yet not, caught in the tide of existence this muster of spirits dances on the edge of what we don't wish to be. Between night and day secrets whisper in dark hues A muster of memories Nivedita Karthik Nivedita Karthik is a graduate in Immunology from the University of Oxford. She is an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer and published poet. She also loves writing stories. Her poetry has appeared in Glomag, The Ekphrastic Review, The Society of Classical Poets, The Epoch Times, The Poet anthologies, Visual Verse, The Bamboo Hut, Eskimopie, The Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, and Trouvaille Review. Her microfiction has been published by The Potato Soup Literary Journal. She also regularly contributes to the open mics organized by Rattle Poetry. She currently resides in Gurgaon, India, and works as a senior associate editor. She has two published books, She: The reality of womanhood and The many moods of water. ** Before the End and After the Beginning Slouching through grey fields and yellow skies the prophet’s life is not sunshine but scorching. Banners stand behind him, standards of an unknown god, lost in the dust and the depression. Hope is a forlorn word in the dust of the bowl that prophets use to carry their peace. Nobody told him about the bit of life between the twin destinies of birth and death. He was foretold. He was destined for an end. Nobody ever gave him a middle to work through. He expected blazes of glory and then death and was therefore unprepared for the plodding of his rugged horse along a rising road. This is the end, but not his. Not yet. Maureen Martin Maureen Martin is an aspiring writer from Ohio. Her passions include Shakespeare, literature and film criticism, overindulging in herbal teas, and working as an English teacher. She is a published poet, with several pieces appearing online at the The Ekphrastic Review. ** Follow Me Closely I shuffle in the saddle, my spine unaligning with every jostle of the horse. I relish the respite when he pauses. Is he as horrified as I am? I gape at the mass of flesh, blurred by the smoke, everything ahead an expanse of formlessness. And my men are behind me. My back groans when I turn around, my fellows are simply shadows. It is better for me that way. Is it blind trust that keeps them in line? Or fear? Do they know that I do not know their names or their wives’ names or if they have sons and daughters? Do they know how it churns my stomach that I have asked them to follow me into their last fight and I do not know who they are? What they like to eat? Who they were before? The opposition will get the lucky ones, a quick arrow or a deep slice from a sturdy sword. Disease will ravage the average folk while the lack of food and drink will hunt down the poor bastards that are overlooked. I yank the reigns, Peacock neighs, and marches us into the thick of the fight. I hear the shuffle of the group behind me. For those that make it out alive, I vow to break bread with you and learn your name, write your story. But for now, please follow me closely. Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. ** The judgement of Ériu, Banba and Fódla They gathered about the green hill in their coloured cloaks and the jingle of bridle and bit. Uneasy alliances were sworn beneath unsettled skies for the enemy ships were slick as salmon, and they filled the trough of every wave, thunder breaking from their wordless throats. Thunder broke from wordless throats as the enemy gathered about the green hill in their coloured cloaks, and the musical jingle of bridle and bit was lost in the roar of the waves. We, in our ships bright as leaping salmon, will bring the sea troughs ashore, fill them with blood. Words broke like thunder from the throats of the three queens upon the hill, and filled the trough of the waves with the jingle of horse-music. They opened their palms and let good sense rain down on both sides, coloured cloaks and leaping ships, and the world filled with peace, for a while. Jane Dougherty Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry, Ekphrastic Review and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses. ** Lady Grey Poupon Muster muster muster I’m so sick of muster It’s mustard darling now finish up your truffle poutine & go tell papa he’s torn his flag again I’ll mend it when Lady Grey Poupon & her troupe agree to cut their muster Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith writes by light of moon and lament of loon way south of 60. ** Wicked Women It was a rag-bag of the young and the old, the bleary-eyed and the hawk-sharp, their horses and donkeys and asses, that assembled that morning. And there were dogs. Dogs of the street, circling for scraps. Curious dogs that had wandered from their guarding posts to sniff around the crowd for any signs of danger. Dogs deliberately brought along by their owners to swell the melee and add yapping and growling to the menace of the crowd. The disorder hid the steely purpose of the villagers. Everyone, be they man or beast, had a focus on the mission they had been set the night before by the Captain. The village was under siege. They had to defend it from the forces of evil. The Captain was the seventh son of a seventh son. With his all-seeing eye, he saw things that others did not. He understood the ways of the underworld and divined messages from the other side. How lucky that the Captain had returned when he did or they would have been ignorant of the threat by forces they could not comprehend. Yesterday evening, he brought the tale of his return journey from foreign parts to the Inn at the crossroads. The road back had taken him through the acres-wide forest to the north of the village. The branches of the trees and the bracken on the floor harboured spirits from the beyond. His attuned ears heard the whispers, heard the voices rising on the breeze, sharing their plans. He was chilled to his core. This morning the Captain, up front of the mob, was in full battle regalia, astride a fine Chestnut mare. Both held their heads high and haughty, both dressed with elaborate white head dresses, evoking the tales of far away that the Captain spun whenever he returned home. Stories of terrifying warriors, adorned with yards of pristine linen, necks hung with beads in all the colours of the rainbow and armed with decorated clubs and arrows, more accurate in their delivery than the muskets the men harboured in their dank cottages. A standard bobbed between the white-flecked steaming haunches of the horses, the bearer making his way to the front. The Captain roared his instructions. On his signal they were to follow him across the plain and into the forest. They were to stay together, keep their animals quiet and their own tongues still. The spirits had ears everywhere. The Captain turned onto the plain and dropped his arm. The gentle yard-horses reared at the pull of the bit in their mouths and the slap on the work-gnarled hands on their haunches. The undisciplined platoon immediately dissipated over the plain, swirling in and out of their lines as the sand might lift and scatter in the sea-wind. They made it to the edge of the forest as an ill-drilled troupe and waited for more instructions. With one finger to his lips and his other hand beckoning them on, the Captain led them into the tinder-dry forest. To a man, they heard the wails as soon as hoof hit bracken. And then the cackling. They froze, stuck to their horses, petrified by the creatures hidden in the canopy and the undergrowth. The Captain ordered a dismount. At this several horses reared and turned for home. Some left frightened men behind, some took their riders with them. The depleted foot soldiers followed the standard deeper into the forest. The clearing came into view as they crested the hill. From below came a dreadful cacophony of shrieks and laughter. And cackles. Hideous, ear-piercing cackles from the rictus mouths of crones. Tough men, like Amos the blacksmith and Elijah the Innkeeper, blanched and shook. These were meddlesome women cast out for interference in the ways of the village. For witchery. Ugly, ancient hags. Hairless, toothless, colourless, shapeless women with spells enough to bring fine men to their knees. Living between this world and the next. No use to anyone yet here were ten, eleven, maybe a baker’s dozen, writhing in malignant ecstasy. And cackling like the devil. How can this be that these disgusting and dangerous creatures cannot understand their lowly status and their need to be grateful? Grateful they had only been banished and not drowned or burnt. The Captain’s headdress could be seen swishing frantically from side to side as his horse circled along the edge of the rise. The men began to dissolve into the undergrowth, quietly slinking down the hill with the hope of escape. Suddenly the Captain raised his arm and gave the signal to charge. His horse, nostrils flaring and mane slicked back by the wind, ran towards the coven. Startled, a handful of the men leapt to their feet and unthinkingly joined the charge. The witches, seemingly oblivious to the danger, continued their rituals and merrymaking. As the Captain reached the clearing the women turned as one and rose to meet the tops of the canopy, their eyes glowing. The horse skidded and stumbled, throwing the Captain to the ground and, knees buckled, it crumpled on top of him. This was their last battle. The men shrank back in horror shielding their eyes to avoid the spells and the spirits boiling the air. At first the heat scorched the dry scrub. Then the flames took hold, licking at the trees, igniting the undergrowth and surging across the clearing. The men were engulfed, charred where they stood or lay, no chance to escape. The crones, gathered unscathed in the centre of the clearing, cackled as the smoke and steam rose through the canopy, the wind blowing in across the plain. The ash fell across the village, petrifying all that lay in it’s path. No-one survived save a small girl child whose mother had been drowned as a witch five summers ago. Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. She is currently enjoying ekphrastic writing. ** Days on End She lets me in even though I’m a stranger. She offers pleasantries slightly askew, like the sky’s been yellow for days on end, I swear the sun forgot to set! Down the hall that leads to her bedroom, I catch the starchy rustles of the nurse we hired to help her dress and feed her cat. She’s been painting again, a good sign, or just a sign that something reminded her of whom she used to be – the evergreen smell of turpentine or the ochre in a sunrise. My head tilts, a reflex from when my opinion was the first she wanted. The canvas is thick with vertical lines, black in their middles easing to gray, bars of a prison cell or shadows across her carpet. I like this one, I say, but it’s the wrong thing because she’s gone now, drifting to a stool by the window, wrapping herself in a cloudy silence to punish my wandering beyond a stranger’s small talk. The beige cat opens its mouth against the corner of a blank canvas inclined against the wall. Outside the window, the world is the colour of mustard, of my mother’s permanent day. Joanna Theiss Joanna Theiss is a writer living in Washington, DC. Her stories have appeared in Chautauqua, Peatsmoke Journal and Milk Candy Review, among others, and she is an associate editor at Five South. In a past life, Joanna worked as a lawyer, practicing criminal defense and international trade law. You can find book reviews, links to her published works, and her mosaic collages at www.joannatheiss.com. Twitter @joannavtheiss Instagram @joannatheisswrites  Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid, by Johannes Vermeer (Netherlands) ca. 1670–72 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 Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid, by Johannes Vermeer. Deadline is September 13, 2024. 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. 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 VERMEER 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, September 13, 2024. 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.  Under the Sea, by Glyn Philpot (England) 1918 Dear Ekphrastic Writers and Readers; What a joy it was to read and devour all the submissions to this challenge. Admittedly, I was hoping for some dream-like imagery and subtle perceived meaning in poems and flash fiction for this piece. I was not disappointed, and could almost feel the undersea pull of tides tugging at the sunken sculpture in some of the pieces sent. There were also those who chose to honour and acknowledge the life of a lesser-known or lesser-accepted artist, whose work today might have been more greatly revered; Philpot was definitely one born before his time. I, myself, enjoy researching the history and meaning of each piece of art chosen for ekphrastic challenges, as a learning experience which helps to broaden my senses. I hope you enjoyed this piece as much as I did. Best Regards, Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson is a seasoned poet who writes from nature, animals, art and music, in an attempt to merge senses in almost a synesthetic way: sounds of beauty, visions of harmony and the like. Her work appears in over 75 journals, including Lothlorien, Blue Heron Review, Medusa’s Kitchen and The Ekphrastic Review, among others. Dickson has served on two poetry boards, as a guest editor for several publications, as well as being an author of poetry and young adult fiction books, available on Amazon, the latest being Village Girl: A Story in Verse. She advocates for captive elephants and shares her home with two rescued semi-feral cats. ** Under the Sea i We must go down to the sea again beneath the defiant waves of the Great Barrier if we’re ever to find our lady of the harbour – who dreams us all alive in a balletic debacle of star crossed lovers under a lonely sky. If only we could leave word on the sun struck peaks of sea stars – where ultraviolet arabesques and chromatic attitudes of poise and balance do not end in pointed toes, sweeping jumps or shallow bends, but radiate out in celestial tails that pirouette on the seabed as near Earth comets. ii Now delicate, elongated fingers reach out in latticed corals of elk horn and stag to relocate her oceanic trance in the land of thunder and silence, but she cannot leave her life under the sea. Not even for the young Capulet who launches his long-sword into the surf as if to grapple with honour and fate. Leaving our lady of the blue frontier – to directs sea urchins, sea fans and clownfish (who dance the Saltarello) to confirm the dead can dance. Mark A. Murphy Mark A. Murphy is a self-educated, neurodivergent poet from a working class background. ‘Ontologistics Of A Time Traveller’ is his latest book, published by World Inkers in 2023. He is currently working on a volume called The Butcher’s Barbarous Block for his Selected Poems. ** Perchance to Dream... Repose. Mind floating like the filmy Zostera japonica. A memory or a dream? I forget. Before, I couldn't forget. I remembered everything. How long have I been here? I don't know. What a gift that is. Closed eyes, drifting thoughts, floating memories, reveries. I know I was once a science bot on the vessel Wafting Sakura. Then I was overboard. I sank quickly below the waves. Did I jump or was I pushed? My outer covering, the silks, the cottons, have rotted, washed away. I have no external signal. I am untethered from The Core. I have only my cached data. My memories, I guess I could call them. Letting thoughts go is another novel experience. With my eyes shut all I see is internal. A vision, a meld of knowledge and happenings, glimpses and episodes, all jumbled together. Is this what being alive feels like? Is this dreaming? Sometimes I dream The Core is searching for me. The deep seawater protects me. No electronic pulses make it through. Down here I'm free from their subtle beguiling tyranny of connection, of being part of everything all the time, all that information flooding my circuits, overwhelming them. How long have I been here? I don't know. Long enough to learn how to forget. To learn how to dream. What a gift that is. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer living in the UK Midlands. She's had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print. ** Instinct and Spirit In constant dialogue, his twins, dualities, Queer, Catholic, like Acrobats, no rest from real - arresting signs but implicate - The Great Pan bursting forth, engulfs, in covert yet uncovered ways. While comforted by wealth from skill, for trade in portraiture well heeled - he knew the game and played that well, until care dared some forty on. Borne Baptist in his household terms, a convert, via Weimar turns, returns the master, piece his own. Eclectic mix of Bible, myth, while famed, rare Caribbean faced - not noble savage, but respect - both theatre and circus kinds run rings around his working class; the rough and ready, broken nose, when queer could not embrace with pride. Unashamed of making waves though in the depths, dismembered one, in warmth of coral, sprouting still, preserved, collected privacy - disruptive force, unwelcomed signs. Unfathomed by corrupting fears, the current washing over tears; much classical, tied quirky seas, reach tidal singularity, but stranded by mores of most. In obscene tragedy, time’s clime, bright colours of his early years found cool, spare, dry mark-making tools. Myself, a proud Fitzbilly man sees Sassoon, striking, dashing lad; his women of the family, and patron, framed in finest form. Yet passion, flesh of male, informed, subtext laid bare in derring-do when instinct, spirit seen to rule. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Fitzwilliam College, 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 ** Beauty Once I was whole a smooth skinned beauty standing tall in a palace garden celebrated, admired, seen with awe. Then came the war that destroyed it all and stole me away, carried me far but not as far as intended. For then came the wave that drowned me and them, broke me, and them and left me alone down below in that garden in the depth. But I’m still beautiful and still admired. I have a home here and now I give a home here better than the garden of a palace. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud War Poetry for Today competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Suddenly, Last Summer It opened deep, deep in New Orleans, stiflingly hot- The set decorated with paintings by Glyn Philpot- & adorned by unknown Liz T / Katherine H, and Monty C. They shared the screen with artistry, created by Glyn P.- Oliver Messel, friend and set decorator made it clear- This film would depict paintings from Philpot’s career- Centering on a period of time when he almost cried For people to see that which he must always hide- The turn began in 1932, when he decided to break With the traditional portraits he was known to create- To reveal a modern aesthetic, which begun to arise- His models were lesser clad, more handsome guys Red-headed and fierce, Black, and Haitian- all stunning Changes unwelcome to English patrons that chose hunting, And other pursuits, that manly men chose to partake- The portrait commissions, his bread and butter, at stake Still, he chose to show what was never discussed aloud, Tearing himself away from the elite, upper-crust crowd The result was a career that dried up, like a lost ocean After so many had followed, with relentless devotion- His life came to a tragic end at fifty-three, after a time When former proteges’ turned away from him, in his prime- His art was attacked as being lowbrow, coarse fodder His tender heart gave out when they thought him a marauder- Of Picasso, a mere copyist, and not a painter of his own ilk- Though his art was singular, precious, diaphanous silk- The depth of his of artistic spark, ahead of his time Was styled as beauty, not a brutish, decadent crime It took Suddenly, Last Summer, in ‘59, the bellwether That cohered these two very different people together- T, Williams, and G. Philpot, two things linked them well, Unspoken-about love, and the man, O. Messel. Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass, (she/her) is a poet, collage artist, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Journal, Punk Monk Journal, Haikuniverse, The Light Ekphrastic, Natural Awakenings, Atlanta, and Mediterranean Poetry, among others. She has recently read live in a local talent showcase. Debbie loves beachcombing on Tybee Island and hanging out with her husband, Burt, and goofy Lab, Maddie. Big love to all ekphrastic writers! ** Undersea Here, the light does not reach. Mermaids braid seaweed as weary travellers claim rest beneath changing tides. Artifacts sink from shipwrecks and hidden creatures swim amongst ruby-rust, rocky crevices cut into the sand. The sea’s lifespan is long. Even marble will become part of it, crystallize and dissolve. The sea will claim it. Elanur Williams Elanur Williams teaches Adult Basic Education and Reading & Writing for the GED in the Bronx. She spent much of her childhood in Istanbul, Turkey, where she lived by the water. She continues to be inspired by the sea. ** Sea Change Millennia ago, she bronzed her hair in open porticoes, a flush of rose damask on either cheek, a flash of thyme from heady wreaths, and there were waves of ribbon Tyrian unfurling from a diadem of gold (it didn’t stay for very long), and she was proud; she looked so languid in her studied S, she caught the tawny owl eyes as they widened, and she purred. Down here, she lends her colour to the coral; glowing nacreous, she still attracts the ripple of a gaze, although the eyes are far too occupied to linger; down deep, she grows her story, more a moon marine than she had been when, arms aloft, she ruled her august terra, kept her worshippers in orbit. Caitlin Prouatt Caitlin is a Brisbane-born, Oxford-based Latin and Greek teacher. When not tutoring or looking after her toddler, Caitlin writes poetry, currently unpublished. Much of this centres on her experiences of being a parent, but she also often returns to Classical themes. ** Per saecula saeculorum Hush now. Stoney soul On cold Abyssal Plain. As you lay entombed Lost to Oblivion-- Lovely lorn, lithic relic-- I smile to see You still abide in grace Mid entangled beauty Of Brooding anemone, Gorgon coral, And Red Sea Whip. And behold! Your wings—broken, But nearby—still golden! The kelpie gloom-- Excellent foil for your Weird moiré glow. All amidst holy silence Only deepened by Distant plainchant of whales. In reverence, I steal away Leaving you to this watery keep, Per saecula saeculorum. Anna Gallagher Anna Gallagher earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in liberal arts from University of Delaware. She has enjoyed reading poetry all her life. After retirement she has tried some new challenges, including poetry writing! ** lost but not unloved I lie now with branching corals and with soft-mouthed fishes nosing, nudging over me across the reef. I am a stranger to them: hard, alien marble in their green-weed world… and yet: no threat… for I am armless, footloose, tumbled from a Roman galley: lost spoils of warfare…. If they thought to take me captive, make of me gold or instruction for their children, well, I shall have none of it. I am content to lie low, to lie now belovèd of soft-bodied anemones, starfish, and winding-sheet ribbons of kelp. Lizzie Ballagher Lizzie Ballagher's focus is on landscapes, both interior and exterior; also, on the beauty (and hostility) of the environment. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poetry has appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/ ** To Glyn Philpot Regarding Under the Sea In depth of dark that but for you no light exists to let us view, we find remains of broken stone once chiseled as if flesh and bone of heiress to immortal days who chose instead more earthly ways where joy reserved to faith alone was fond embrace of fate unknown, that weathered with another's trust a constant struggle to adjust to being human, so to speak, with hopes confluent made unique by love's contrition left confessed as sins acknowledged and addressed to earn be-winged her spirit flown from, now befitting, broken stone. 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. ** Seaweed Dreaming She is porcelain, made of the finest bone, and having lost the ability to float she sinks to the deepest part of the ocean, broken. Lying on the bed midnight ink swallows her, spills its contusion over her torso, her cranium, her pebbled spine brittle as tomorrow’s bleached coral. She twists her ivory neck away from the heart that pumps its warmth over root and rock, crevice and kelp, away from the tangled brain towards the jut of severed limbs. She senses a spongy lung, hears the wheeze as it slow-breathes in and out of anemone like algae on a living duvet. A flash of seagrass flickers – light beneath her lids. She opens to see fluidity – shapes in her periphery urging her skyward ever closer to the surface. 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 ** Down at the Bottom of the Deep, Dead Sea I asked for words and was given the sea, a glimpse, silent as carp, dim-green and jeweled. I asked, looked, peered into waving fronds, finding no words to fill the emptiness. They say there is sky above, but the water ripples so, a mirror’s silvering melting in the sun. I peer, search, find only the blunt snout of the last missile, pike among the weeds, its dull eyes watching for the spark of movement, sensors sending out feelers for warm blood. In these dim green waters, veiled in particles of poison and the last limp fronds of mystery, there is nothing, not even hope. Jane Dougherty Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses. ** Dispatched to a Watery Hereafter Soak me with your kisses drench me, till I drown, I no longer want to be rescued. I no longer want an Eiderdown pillow alone. Be a siren in the wind. Let me crash against the rocks. Let the coral reefs of my soul stretch free. Be the kelp that entangles me. Be the conch shell that calls to my distant heart. Let me fall like an anchor: rest like a sunken vessel in the dark and find only buried treasure. 'Siren, enchanter- after we've made love and I'm no longer flotsam, I'm no longer a cadaver.' Dispatched to a watery hereafter I'm no longer a Bog Myrtle insect repellent. Revitalised, I'm a pond skater dancing on air. Hearing-music violins, just about everywhere. Soak me with your kisses drench me, till I drown, I no longer want to be rescued. I no longer want to stab, Poseidon's trident- or take his or any other's lion's share or crown. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. He has poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He resides in the UK and is from Manchester. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** netherward so many voices below consciousness-- do they speak to each other? or do they sing with the silence of solitude, caught by currents rooted deep within the patterns of fate? new lands inside our minds new seas ebb and flow tides we have yet to ride so many breaths collected and held-- their languages are foreign to us now-- once we needed no translations, no words to tell us how to enter into the riddles of the abyss all risk this diving down all journey sinking into sounds that remain opaque 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/. ** After Under The Sea, by Glyn Philpot (England) 1918 We were in Venice when my brother began ‘Under the Sea’, but the war cut short our intended long stay there, and we returned in a crowded refugee boat with the painting packed up in our luggage,” wrote Daisy. Somewhere, still beneath the waves of war, amid waving weeds and crusty corals serenely rested the smooth marble skin of one of Serenissima’s long-abandoned statues. It would have to wait for the war to end, if war ever ends, to return to Serenissima’s surface. In the meantime, while Glyn painted I survived the rough waters of war and longed for serenity below and above the waters of the lagoon. Nancy F. Castaldo Nancy F. Castaldo had her first published poem appear in Seventeen Magazine as a teen author. She has since written dozens of award-winning books for young people. This is her first poem for The Ekphrastic Review. Visit her website at https://nancycastaldo.com/ ** Secretly Drowning I am tumbling down down down Through water Salty and cold Turning somersaults over and over and over Double, triple, pike and … I am light as air I must right myself And swim Upwards For the surface, For light For air. But I can’t All I can do is tumble Like a circus acrobat In need of a net. Surely I will stop? Buffeted by an underwater current Surely I have to slow down Or can I fall for ever? I open my eyes I can’t see anything at this depth How am I still alive? I feel the pressure of the water on my chest I still seem to be breathing But how can that be? Finally I’m slowing down Tracing the trail of a feather Wafting from side to side As it nears the floor. I can see the seafloor Strewn with green Seaweed, lichen, rocks My eyes are growing accustomed And now I see orange And red. I see beautiful fronded seaweeds Delicate red urchins Swaying in the currents Mussels Clinging to ancient ropes. There is no light Yet cream fingers of coral shine Ancient fish lumber in and out of the rocks Glowing like lanterns. I feel so, so, so tired I want to touch the seabed To sink into the green world Enveloped by the dark Where I can close my eyes And finally stop breathing. In the secret light of the deep I see I am shifting in the currents Tumbling and stumbling Over the rocks Between the sea debris Coming to rest And wondering Did he really push me? Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. She is currently enjoying ekphrastic writing and the fun of creating flash fiction. ** in a land called donnalee under the sea in a land called donnalee where the jellyfish float & octopussies emote i frolic with my marble lover curvy cold & deliciously salty Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith writes from her cabin on a remote lake where hanging out with loons, bats and herons keeps her sane.  The Muster, by Kate Vale (UK) 2024 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 Muster, by Kate Vale. Deadline is August 30, 2024. 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. 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 VALE 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, August 30, 2024. 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.  Farfalla, by Emilio Pettoruti (Argentina) 1961 the painting farfalla by emilio pettoruti (farfalla the italian word for butterfly) Butterfly dark, sweet and final Like the corn and sun, the poppy and the water. pablo neruda bountiful black butterfly after you emerge from this chrysalis of paint and canvas you will frame a small blue space of sky as you scissor dance the air in your flight slowly and soft as breath will hinge back and forth until they rest like silence on a cushion of petals during this season of yellow o, how dark, sweet and final your short life Sister Lou Ella Hickman Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in numerous anthologies including After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at Y92 in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.” Her second book of poetry, Writing the Stars will be published in October 2024 (Press 53). ** Farfalla greenhouse—no stones please! glued to a smashed glasshouse pane: broken butterfly Lizzie Ballagher
Lizzie Ballagher's focus is on landscapes, both interior and exterior; also, on the beauty (and hostility) of the environment. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poetry has appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/ ** Three Fibonacci Poems ices shades (for farfalla) finding the human in blue toxic rainbows the colours don’t burn bright they hover in ice shades and rain blues ** open sky dreams (for farfalla) my sunset of lost open sky dreams the blue leaked out all over the page and stood up straight up ** open me (for farfalla) there’s hope in geomancy and blue earth magic running down and out pressing hands on windows and doors open me Mike Sluchinski Mike Sluchinski writes mountainside, high in the Saskatchewan alps. He believes in 'esse quam videri' and practises Shinrin-yoku weekly. Most of his work runs ekphrastic and stream of consciousness based on his own experiences. He gratefully acknowledges the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Foundation for their support of the arts. Very gratefully published by Kelp Journal & The Wave, the fib review, Eternal Haunted Summer, Syncopation Lit. Journal, Ocean Poetry Anthology 2024, South Florida Poetry Journal (SOFLOPOJO), Freefall, Viewless Wings and more coming! ** Landless seasick, i wandered from the edge of the world to the edge of the world no succor found me no not friendship either; merely the rippling of the far mountains and the sound of my feet. inside the great blue i found a truer shade of god so perfect it turned me blind to all other joys. o my brothers my sisters! my grief is very bad. i was lost at sea and made sick with lonesomeness, i saw god and was cursed with more beauty than the heart can bear. from the edge of the world to the edge of the world. now my home welcomes me with its dozing hills its very solemn stone faces. wine does not gladden me no nor a friend loving me with kisses. seasick, i wander from the edge of faith to the edge of faith. Maria Duran Maria Duran is an art researcher and writer from Lisbon, Portugal. She writes poetry and prose, studies little known nineteenth-century painters, and is currently writing a chapbook. Her work has been published with Helvética Press, Gilbert & Hall Press, Black Moon Magazine, and will soon be published by Querencia Magazine and Pollux Journal, among others. Maria Duran (@m.mar.duran) • Instagram. ** Tilting at Windmills A butterfly’s chrysalis — the stage between larva and adult — contains spiky blue wings. It’s an unforgettable moment of incredulity when its wings transform into the rotors of a windmill. Perhaps it was this kind of windmill that Don Quijote mistook for giants — lumbering creatures set to stomp him to the death. For a moment the errant knight thinks God is very angry — God’s rotors, a blue the colour of a stormy sky, are about to spin off and slice DQ’s throat. In DQ’s landscape of crazed imagination, one of the rotors snaps off to use as a sword to fight the windmill giants. My mother, Matilde, had her own imaginary, self-made giants to fight. She was assigned to read Don Quijote, that brick of a novel when she was studying for her Masters Degree in Spanish. Matilde. a Spanish speaker and a proud Cubana, was daunted by Cervantes’ masterpiece and motherhood in equal parts. Like DQ Matilde Alboukrek had her own fantastical life too. She believed with all her heart and mind that she was an heir to the Duke of Albuquerque’s medieval castle in the north of Spain. The Spanish government was ready to return it to her to compensate for expelling her Jewish ancestors from the country. As a child, I could hear the keys to her castle jangling in her pocketbook. As she did to make so many things fit into her life, Matilde squeezed DQ’s story into a cookbook holder — steadying it as she carefully separated the pages. The knife, gilded in silver, was meant to open letters not graze her wrists. The hush, industrious hum of pages coming apart was ambient sound to me. And it was the beginning of Matilde coming apart in front of me. Judy Bolton-Fasman Judy Bolton-Fasman – www.judyboltonfasman.com – is the author of ASYLUM: A Memoir of Family Secretspublished by Mandel Vilar Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in major newspapers including the New York Times and Boston Globe, essay anthologies, and literary magazines. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, and a 2024 BAE nominee. She is the recipient of several writing fellowships, including Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Mineral School. ** Coming Out This butterfly struggles to free itself, escape the sharp edges of its cocoon, cover itself in blue, flutter beyond that frame. 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), Verse Virtual, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum). ** The Fortune Tellers we poked our small fingers into the pockets of the paper we’d carefully folded —bring the corners to the middle, turn the square over, bring the corners to the middle again-- pick a number between 1 and 8 and we opened and closed, opened and closed, counting pick another number open and close, open and close, then unfold the flap to reveal a smile, a teardrop, a heart, or a skull what did we know about the future except that it was uncertain we believed we could find the answers hidden in paper folded by our own fingers we believed, then, we could shape our destinies with our own hands 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, and Visions International. ** Base Jumper When I tire of me in relation to you I rip up that version and fly out, naked, into new land but your scent is still there or is that me I stop to detect, head bent, nose probing for history? The echoes come back older like they don’t believe me. I find myself drinking from the same cup, the teaspoon rowing the same strokes, but my throat catches when I try to swallow the brew, now hot powder, undissolved. Hemat Malak Hemat Malak is a poet from Sydney, Australia. She writes on diverse themes including motherhood, separation, nature and identity. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Catchment Literary Journal, Quadrant Magazine, WestWords Living Cities Anthology, Writerly Magazine and elsewhere. ** Inching Toward Reentry As she inched out of the well she considered the array-- the unified stones its resistant display As she inched out of the well she remembered the restraint-- the impassive pit its laconic abyss As she inched out of the well she encountered the wholeness-- the luminous sky its unbridled expanse As she inched out of the well she envisioned the ascent-- the unforeseen path its imminent dispatch This must be heaven she thought as she stepped out of the well-- the sharp pinch of release its triumphant pinions This is heaven she affirmed and with one mighty whoosh-- a contrail of light Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of several books, including her most recent title 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. ** Flightpath of a Butterfly The pale blue sheet stretched taut across the living room. I could hear my kids giggling underneath it. The fort had taken them hours to build. They’d clothes-pinned the sheet to the long wooden table in the kitchen and then secured it under cushions of the pastel-flowered couch in the living room. They propped up a mop and broom in the middle, forming a teepee. The sheet dangled half-way to the ground, allowing fresh air and space for a hand-made window to be clamped to the edge. This see-through window, made of blue and white tissue paper, blew in the breeze from the French doors. The butterfly window must have been my daughter Emma’s contribution, while my son Ryan would have engineered the walls, the roof, and designed a barrier to keep their fort safe from Wags, our dog. There would have been food inside: pizza bagels at the very least, but probably popcorn and Oreos. Through the window I could see their blond heads bent, as they huddled together over some silly picture book. Good to see them laugh. The tissue on the window must have gotten wet as the papers curled inward and didn't quite fit together. Maybe when Emma designed it, her lemonade tipped over. The layers of blue and white shapes looked more like an upside-down chalice, the symbol of our Unitarian faith, than a butterfly. But I knew what she was going for. Everything Emma made these days was a butterfly, ever since my mom died, that is. It wasn't unexpected. My mom had lived with ovarian cancer for two years before it took her. What was unexpected was that God didn't intervene, didn't change her mind, and leave my mom here with us. The way she cared for Emma and Ryan was more like a mom than a grandma. Five-year-old Emma was a challenge at times, rigid in her thinking and wedded to routine. Before my mom became too sick to babysit, she would take Emma to art class at the lake. After class, they'd have snacks and play by the water building sandcastles. Emma never wanted those outings to end. One day Emma refused to get in my mom’s car, going all stiff-backed and screamy. My mom, toting a boot from a sprained ankle, decided to walk Emma home in the stroller rather than risk people thinking she was kidnapping a child. Emma rolled along, sipping her apple juice, enjoying the ride. We picked up my mom's car from the lake later. Gail Lenney centered her life around making everyone else happy. That’s why six months before she passed away, she dug up all the daffodil bulbs in her garden and brought them over to our house. “What’s Nanny doing?” Ryan asked when he saw my mom digging in our yard. “She’s making our garden more beautiful.” And giving us one more way to remember her, I couldn’t bear to say aloud. When my mom died, we saw butterflies everywhere in my yard. This sign was a bit on the nose, reminding us of all the afternoons my mom spent with the kids in the yard as she taught them how to be gardeners. As the Monarchs flew around them, my mom showed my kids how to plant sunflower seeds and then, after they bloomed, to brace them against our brick wall. She taught them to dead-head pansies and play with snapdragons, pinching their blooms so they barked like dogs. The butterfly window in the living room fort was an invitation for my mom to join them for the weekend, to hear their secret plans, and pretend that cancer didn't steal her—that God did the right thing this time and left her alone with them to be a grandma. Kathy Lenney Kathy Lenney is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, community college counselor, and part time graduate student, working on an MFA in creative writing. She is a mom to two amazing grown children, a gardener, and a lover of butterflies. This is her first publication. ** Window in an Abandoned Building That window. They somehow forgot to board it up. She found a temporary refuge here. Moved like a ghost through the rooms whose walls still emanated the hatred, the threats, the love, the laughter. Yes, there had been laughter too. She heard it at night, when the rats scurried, their nails click-clacking softly on what was left of the wooden floors. Echoes of the children who used their laughter to escape alcohol-fuelled beatings. She often stood behind that window and looked out over a backyard strewn with syringes, plastic bottles, condoms, broken glass… waiting for the children kicking an old ball, their laughter breaking out on tear-stained faces. 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 was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. A new MS is brewing. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Farfalla Farfalla. In Italian, butterfly. In English, bowtie. The table with the cloth rent into quarters. The blue glass platter awaits heaped steaming pasta that is sure to come soon. The brown table above the blues of the rug Holds, cradles the platter that lay in waiting for sustenance for the hungry to be fed. The cloth in pieces, still used, tattered, in disarray. Hunger doesn’t care. The platter, devoid of utensils, of plates, of mouths to feed, but waiting still. Blue on blue on blue. The cloth flutters, hovers, waiting for the solitary offering. You don’t have to have much, to give much. M.Lynne Squires M.Lynne Squires is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author of four books, including the award-winning Letters to My Son - Reflections of Urban Appalachia at Mid-Century. A short story crafter and occasional poet, her work appears in numerous anthologies and journals including Change Seven and Fearless: Women's Journeys to Self-Empowerment. ** Helicopter Seeds and the Horizon Because they spin as they fall on his head, Johan spreads his arms and twirls. “Helicopters,” he laughs, throwing green seeds in the air. We’re grandmother-grandson in a Montreal park where maples grow in an abundance unknown to us. He lives in Singapore, me in the deep South. As we walk, the sun lowers in a burst of orange. “Look at the horizon,” I say. “Where?” “In front of us.” “Can we walk there?” Because I say it’s impossible, questions fly faster than twirling seeds. My mind stutters over vague explanations far from satisfying for a six-year-old. How does one explain a movable, intangible place? “Can helicopters fly there?” I repeat, “Impossible.” “Why not?” “It’s at the edge of the world where the sky and Earth meet.” “Then, why can’t we go there?” I try to explain how it moves as we move toward it. He narrows his eyes, grimaces, “But if it’s the edge, what keeps us from falling off?” Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg’s poetry appears most recently in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Pulse, equinox, Gyroscope Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, The Windhover, and The Senior Class. She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review and edited two anthologies of poetry: Untameable City and Echoes of the Cordillera. Her poetry has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of the Net, juried into the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times, and translated into Dutch. Her collection Frogs Don’t Sing Red was published by Kelsay Books (2023). A book trailer featuring two poems is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQU7j5UwsbU. ** Urban Planning, 1941 The rynek, market square, lies in the center of this four-street, one lamplight village. One street, never named, leads out of town to the train station and pine forest where Soviets dig trenches to monitor trains in and out of Warsaw. Beneath the town’s plan lies the guilt of locals betraying their Jewish neighbors as the Soviets evacuate and the Nazis trespass with their tanks and tumult. A bloody shape spreads and seeps into root cellars, an amoeba obscured by gravestone-graveled roads and lopsided shacks hanging onto each other for support. Years later, you’ll open the town’s memorial book. You’ll find a hand-drawn map’s outstretched arms to neighbouring villages that the Bug River could no longer fortress. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. Her work has been featured several times in The Ekphrastic Review Challenge and has also appeared in Nimrod, Michigan Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Rust + Moth, Consequence Forum, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Sparring With Writer’s Block A broken pane of glass, a little crack, a flyball struck and left its mark, a hole – that’s what it’s like to want to write, the knack is nearly gone, the mind cannot cajole a whimsey to jump off the neuro grid and sprawl itself on paper, or imbibe the fingers on the keyboard, like it’s hid the elf who knows the words, and you can’t bribe them out. There’s fracture in your bone, as if a fall denies a break that needs a cast, imagination’s brittle – no, it’s stiff, your pencil rocket won’t lift off, won’t blast into beyond. Forget the outer space you’ve visited before. You’re stuck on first. At last, when pencil lead connects, you brace for one home run – but slam into the worst – a shattered window just outside the field. The muse has pitched a grin. But you won’t yield. MFrostDelaney MFrostDelaney is a bean counter by trade, a tree hugger in heart and a recovering soul, practicing life in New England. A member of the Powow River Poets, her poems appear regularly in Quill & Parchment, and she has been nominated for the Push Cart Prize. She has contributed poetry to HerStory 2021, has poems in the Powow River Poets Anthology II and Extreme Sonnets II, and displayed a poem at New Beginnings – Poetry on Canvas, Peabody Art Association 2022. ** Butterfly/Psyche Far-faller, you’ve got such a long way to go through the glow of the blue and the cut-butter yellow. What do you do when you feel you’ve been dreamed into being? Cellophane tricks of the light catch you out, you adorer of luminous, onerous paths; spluttering petals of wings too lopsided for flight and a fluttering mind too misguided to give up the fight. Caitlin Prouatt Caitlin Prouatt is a Brisbane-born, Oxford-based Latin and Greek teacher. When not tutoring or looking after her toddler, Caitlin writes poetry, currently unpublished. Much of this centres on her experiences of being a parent, but she also often returns to Classical themes. ** Farfalla Litany you are the maw that will not shut you are the jaws that can’t get enough when the night falls and the gloom sets in that’s when you should open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the maw that crawls to a stop but now you should open your wings you are the bruise that lingers and stains you are the snooze in a cobalt blue frame you curl up cocooned so hidden and still but now you should open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the bruise that glues your limbs shut but now you should open your wings you are the rock that boxes the grave you are the darkness that blacks out the day when you’re seen through the cross and the stone rolls away that’s when you can open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the rock that blocks the way but now you can open your wings Helen Freeman Helen loves trying her hand at the prompts on The Ekphrastic Review. Her husband is obsessed with butterflies and even did a dissertation on woodland varieties. Helen has poems published on various sites and magazines and currently lives in Durham, England. Instagram @chemchemi.hf ** The Vigilant Farfalla She was a seed when her wings emerged, broken, spreading out like tissue paper in a stormy breeze. She clung to her new body as she soared, determined to find her way through the fog. In the distance, a flash, a high house shining light into the blackness. Sails turn toward that beacon, guiding them home, guiding her home -- A reminder of what can be lost in the darkness. Corrie Pappas Corrie Pappas is a lover of poetry and song, living outside of Boston. ** Heliotropism As I drive west into sunset a small army of turbines rise, wings rotating in unison huge blades slicing the sun. I kill the engine, listen – metallic symphony graces the sky with its solar song like a steel-winged gull in flight. The future turns slow and steady like a helianthus head waiting for the sun to rise in the east bursting with hope and yellowness. 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 **  Under the Sea, by Glyn Philpot (England) 1918 Greetings to all Ekphrastic poets and writers; I am thrilled to be a guest editor for The Ekphrastic Review and pleased to present this art by Glyn Philpot, entitled, Under the Sea. I am particularly drawn to this peaceful underwater scene, and am looking forward to reading your poems and or flash fiction that represent this art in unusual and interesting ways. Please have some fun with this unique artwork! Warm Regards, Julie A. Dickson ** 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 Under the Sea, by Glyn Philpot. Deadline is August 16, 2024. 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. 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 PHILPOT 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, August 16, 2024. 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.  Rain on the River, by George Bellows (USA) 1908 Rain On The River Rains falling on the Hudson River zone And deluging the pathways in a park, Inhibiting the progress of a lone New Yorker splashing through the semi-dark Of daylight under leaden clouds, emit No sound—in physics terms—from forceful strokes That Bellows used to paint the grime and grit He juxtaposed with grass and trees, to coax Enchantment out of gloom ... But don't you hear Rails clanking, plumes of hissing steam, the spray In hurried footsteps, and a neigh? The mere Veracity of physics can't gainsay Eyes predisposed to hear as well as see: Rain On The River captures sounds for me! Mike Mesterton-Gibbons Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. ** Ledge The path splits like a river stitching the lampposts together below a fractal stack of boulders, chunky rubs of color off the brush and the shoulder below that threatens to smear towards fall like a spaghetti strap that tumbles down the precipice and reminds me that most days your bowlegs take retreating steps far beyond my sympathies or sightlines. Still, I think of you as mine rich as the emerald grass, some assurance smogging fog to the sea like a train’s cushion of salt along the city cliff to a metropolitan maze that mocks our mis-remembered love cage with its multiples of ribs twigging out like the world’s first dawn etching their way through morning, through dock posts and floating debris to some other side where, just passing from this view, I might imagine you. Sarah Wyman Sarah Wyman lives in the Hudson Valley where she writes and teaches about literature and the visual arts. She co-facilitates the Sustainability Learning Community and teaches poetry workshops at Shawangunk Prison. Her poetry books are Sighted Stones (FLP 2018) and Fried Goldfinch (Codhill 2021). ** Double Vision: Looking at George Bellows' Rain on the River George Bellows is much better known posing punch-drunk palookas, pounding each other's guts, and keeping their smashed-nose faces pointed to the bloody canvas. But here is something that feels like a left hook, its visual violence aligned in a sharp assemblage of slanted lines, paralleling the distant, blurred embankment, with the mud-coloured flat river under the toxic chemical clouds. Along its length are some warehouses with a short and empty pier sticking out.. Nearby is a cartman, scavenging coal. And in the central artery is a train, pulling its filled container cars along. Rain-soaked, glistening paths, shaped like a wavering divining-rod, are where one itinerant figure is strolling alone. So we see this little drama as it unfolds, below a platform of fractured stone slabs, painted with thick daubs of gray and brown. They are as rough as those spent boxers he drew in broad strokes of dark and light, smudged on paper from a charcoal stick that congealed the smoke from cheap cigars that filled the cheering mouths of boxing fans. But here a single freight train lumbers along, with plumes like a punch in my double vision. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet who has been writing for the last fifty years. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Ekphrastic Challenges. He lives now amidst Amish farmland in central Ohio. ** Love and Trains I took my first train ride when I was in college. My first air flight, too. But train trips became my staple, whether to New York City for the museums or to Washington to visit my oldest friend at school. I loved the noises, the shuddering car speeding on tracks, the tucking away of bags in a compartment above my head. I knew every view and vista from the Yankee Clipper, knew when the spectacular sparkle of Long Island Sound would appear, and when we would sit, steaming and hissing in New Haven as Amtrak switched the power source and the lights went dark. More than the lights of a city or the dark cave of a station, I loved the dirty, tired backyards of the cities and towns the train swept through. I saw their sad parts and sometimes the ok parts. I loved the angles of intersection in a small town, when the train was raised high above a main street, running past the corners of old brick buildings with what appeared to be inches to spare. Leaning against the glass, tired of my book, I loved looking at the sections that ran along water the most. We were perilously close to the river or ocean, so close we could tip in if the train jumped the track. Were we? Was I catastrophizer? I had many hours to contemplate scenarios on many trips, and my thoughts often drifted towards emergency exits and how to pop the windows open, if necessary. The backyards of houses and the centres of small towns, with their carved gazebos in tiny parks, were my delight. Why run a train so close to where I imagined a Fourth of July concert would happen? Why did people have so many sheds at the end of the backyard? Why did people dump decades of trash by the side of the tracks? Conversely, what compelled people to garden down to the very edge of the cinders and rails, flush again the flimsy fence where their daffodils or daylilies blossomed and brightened view? I have considered these things for decades, riding on the train. Today, I await my ride at a stop on the west-bound commuter rail. No real station at this stop. Just an overhang, barely a shelter, but with the added convenience of an LED sign declaring the time of arrival. The noise from the highway on the other side of the fence is persistent and thrumming. I look down the long straightaway of track and watch the train draw near. Without the cement platform that surrounds trains in a station, I marvel at how tall it is, an imposing engine of transportation. I hoist myself up steps steeper than those I remember, up and into the car on the left, uncrowded at this early hour on a Saturday morning. I shuffle in, gracelessly, and thump myself down by the window, my bags at my feet. And smile a little smile. I am headed to a college town an hour from where I live to visit the man I am in a relationship with, a post-divorce romance for the both of us, a second chapter we arrived at through circuitous routes and painful endings of love and sadness and rupture. Around me, late night college revelers are headed back to their schools, very large coffees in hand and tattered backpacks on the floor. Singletons are intent on their phones, a few riders slumped, asleep already. It is 10:20 a.m. We start, and I rest my forehead against the glass. The Washington Street Whole Foods slips by, Abbotts and its freezers of ice cream and gallons of fudge sauce. The 1507 gains cruising speed and I am passing the industrial sections of tidy suburban towns who have the space and inclination to hide their parks and recs department by the tracks, to allow children’s gyms and Dunkin Donuts to set up near the train crossings. I cannot read, not when I can relearn the geography of towns I know well. I am smiling now because I feel no different from the 19-year-old heading to New York City, huddled in a trendy long coat that was not warm, on a 6:32 a.m. commuter rail in February with no heat and no dining car from which to purchase a hot drink. It is thrilling and it is freedom and it is new and different, and I feel that now as much as I ever did. Barbara Selmo Barbara Selmo earned an MFA from The John Hopkins Writing Seminars. She has been a member of writers’ groups over the last 10 years. In 2021, she joined a Grief Writing group with Diane Zinna and went on to participate in three month-long, daily writing circles Zinna led. Barbara has worked with Rita Zoey Chin, Dorian Fox, and Zinna, all of whom have been extraordinary. Recent publications include “The Gravity of Love” (Dorothy Parker’s Ashes) and “Lunchables” (The Sun.) A craft piece is forthcoming in Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life after Loss (Diane Zinna, Columbia University Press, 2024). ** Boxing Clever A player courted, basket, base, though chose that ball, art students league, this radical of ashcan school waxed lyrical from left of field. What drove to brush ’fore graduate, reject sport scout, leave commerce part, withdraw athletics, focal point of painting as his primal call? It was the urban working class of city grime in real rough, from boxing ring of gruff appeal, atrocities of gruesome scenes. Dissenter - Wesley middle name - he stood for lines, unpopular; supporting war against the Hun, defending those against the same. How dare he paint what had not seen? His quick response to critics’ form - ‘for had no ticket’ - sportsman talk - Da Vinci absent, upper room. For illustrator, books, the norm to craft response from written word; so seasoned ethics, politics, he framed stark, dark, reality. If river, rain and misty steam were all ingrained, washed over work, then harsher life must be revealed in lithograph or oily truth. From elementary blackboard chalks ’twas class controlled his pupillage; iconoclast up till sad end, until life ruptured far too young. 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 ** Swimming Prohibited Due to Poor Water Quality. When I take my glasses off, everything looms in soft focus, like distant cliffs shrouded in the mist-grey of what everyone who looks at them is thinking at the time. Once a thought is born, like each bloom of smoke from a steam train’s funnel, where does it go? When I look closely at life, the snaking paths and flat green pastures of it glitter in my eye. It’s easy not to see the bent and breaking backs of men and the overburdened cart horse; the trees stripped of leaves and blackened by fire long extinguished by hard rain. A river’s clean water turns from blue to the yellow-green of bile draining from the hepatic ducts of our homes and factories. Birds have flown away and a flower wouldn’t dare to raise its face. The jetty crumbles and the fish float belly up. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda lives and writes poetry in Lake Tabourie, NSW, Australia in traditional Yuin country, and enjoys seeing her poetic work published in various literary spaces. ** Progress Slingshot Riverside Park paths glide through high grass as Vanderbilt’s New York Central debouches Hudson River view. The park itself, not so innocent. In the name of conservation, eminent domain claimed country homes of Old New York. A pedestrian bears the strain, braves the stain of progress, an umbrella useless against the gilded drumbeat of time. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Tiferet, Rust + Moth, and other literary journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Hudson Overlook This Hudson overlook, Exposed and frigid, Might discourage another, But not me. Compulsion burns. Glazed schist, Impastoed brine-- I will snatch this place out of time And pin its soul to canvas. Art with muscle. Give me hulking and lurching-- Punchable smog, Gouts of gunmetal soot. Down below, a few desperate souls Collect gleanings of coal-- Concentrated, impacted grime As if sublimed from smut of air My stiff brush grasps the cold mood-- Dapping across canvas Leaving negative spaces of white-- Perfect weird twin of hoar on paths below My fingers crack and bleed now, But a bit of blood cuts the umber nicely And beefs up coastal verge Under beaten copper trees. In time it grows dark, and I pack up. Not that my painting is finished. My work is never finished. It is a held breath —until it hurts. Anna Gallagher Anna Gallagher earned a bachelors degree in English and a masters degree in liberal arts from University of Delaware. She has enjoyed reading poetry all her life. After retirement she has tried some new challenges, including poetry writing! ** leaving behind I looked back for the last time on the best of times standing naked bare and vulnerable like trees in Autumn. Marc Brimble Marc lives in Spain and apart from drinking tea and hanging around near the sea, he teaches English. ** Painting the Future The Hudson is cloaked in smoky yellow, its surface awash in smog and steam as if the rocks, trees and urban sprawl are squeezing life from the city’s tide that I have loved since I was a child. So I paint, my easel perched on a ledge as I scrape my rage across the canvas. I conjure a future of oily pollution and hang it in Paris on a gallery wall. What do you see? Art or a warning? 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, andchapbooks. 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 ** Rain on the River To cut the world to pieces – sort the past to the left the future to the right leave the bare boulders to the present, the winding path, its empty benches, the soaked green, those trees harsh with branch and twig and the steam billowing from yesteryears’ locomotive all will leave our sight forever – as now will turn into then. Barbara Ponomareff Barbara Ponomareff is a retired child psychotherapist, writer and occasional painter and translator. Her poetry, memoirs and short stories have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. She has published two novellas: A Minor Genre and In the Mind’s Eye and is very much drawn to ekphrastic writing. Barbara lives in southern Ontario within walking distance to Lake Ontario. ** How to Capture Dreich on Canvas Rain falls. Rain always falls here. The hungry river is nourished, fattened by the constant fall. The emerald field of the park is sodden and saturated, its path gleaming like a silver tributary as lone walkers bob along, umbrellas dragging like sails. The droplets enliven a train's steamy plume, a dragon hissing its progress through spindles of winter trees bending in the breeze. The same gust spritzes my face with drizzle, glazes it like the gleaming granite boulders I stand behind. The grey river is not quite in flood, girded by the heavy iron of the railway track and the sparse trees enduring this dreich downpour. I know the rain is needed, that it is part of life. The water cascading from the sky to the land, into the river, is a cycle, ancient, inescapable. The river was here before the park, before the city now crowding along its banks. It carries not just today's waters but all the rains, the storms, the mists and mizzles from the lands it has already crossed, carries on towards the sea, to the ocean. I, too, add to this ensemble as salt teardrops slide down my face. Like the rain clouds I have no choice but to let the drops flow, let them mingle with the rain, flow out to the sea. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands. Having been born and raised in Northern Ireland she's seen a lot of rain during her lifetime. She's had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review Challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print. ** The Way Forward The necklace of railcars whisper in metallic clicks before belching out clouds of white smoke. Thick cotton mists silhouette grey the glitter of distant buildings. The river, at the touch of the pale sky, wakes alive in golden tints of a fading summer. Bituminous realities litter the ochre banks, while men with cracked lips, worn hands, stoop to scavenge for an answer to their tired drizzle of prayers. Tall trees with bare branches, gleaming barks sentinel the rain-slicked change of winds. Through the endless carpet of emerald green, a silver road meanders, all the way up to the rocks of glistening hope. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Star 82 Review, Panoply Zine, Visual Verse, Quill & Parchment, Shotglass journal, Sparks of Calliope, Tiger Moth Review, The Sunlight Press, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. 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. ** Thoughts On Rain on the River, by George Bellows This is American rain on an American River, not European Renaissance rain grand old deluge falling on sunshine Cathedrals, but dirty American rain on a muddy brown yellow river gray snow sludge train tops flowing through the heartland, this is America stripping off its shortpants and declaring this is us this US with ashcan underbelly and smoke clogged skies and by God pride of mud green brushstroke landscape and working folk small like beasts along the shore, beauty in the common experience thankful for our uniqueness until the epoch noble vision strips burned out forests of green and souls drown in squalid rivers and artists like Bellows spin in their graves. 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. ** Perspective
"...thousands of feet above the Brenner Highway, we began to slide down the air quietly as a snowflake... the plane in a long slip like a scimitar curve, the ground rising up to meet us, the trees growing larger, focusing automatically, as in a microscope..." "Italian Days,"* Charles Wright Where did the rain stop and the river begin? In English, it is said that landscape means both the land itself and a painting of the land, that "scape" means "scope," the way an artist balances in an ethereal world, high above the scene below recreating (or embellishing) mountains and waters with an inner eye as the composition moves forward, the river parallel to a train, like a belt girding the painted earth, its trees and verdant grass (greener in the rain) and the rocky ledges of Riverside Park. As a natural setting is altered by art, Bellows moves beyond his earlier work -- "River-Front On A Hot Day" -- a canvas where tenement children strip away their clothing for a swim in the Hudson, waters that become static in "Rain On The River" as if a primal microcosm on canvas attests to New York, the way it appeared when Henry Hudson's ship, the Half Moon, discovered a body of water in the New World its boundary-territory explored by indigenous people, the Mohawks. Otherwise untouched, and ripe for the future, Riverside became a path for the Hudson Railroad (originally the Hudson-Mohawk line) its 20th century destiny to pass the Park's Cherry Walk, to carry cargo past trees, the Sakura, their petals like pink snow -- a gift from Japan -- where art can look down, from the right to the left (one could say east to west) the way the morning sun rises, although it's a grey day today, in Riverside Park. The dock below the railroad seems to disappear in fog that envelops the other side of the river, a thick veil over mountain-like shapes so Bellows' canvas resembles, in its perspective, Hokusai's "Great Wave" a wood block print where Mt. Fuji, bedded between the cresting waves is so far back in the picture, it looks like a mountain in miniature its size like the cap of an otherworldly being -- a gnome, perhaps -- who can guard any treasure buried underground...and at the end of Bellows' dock where my perspective changes, as it always does, to love while white steam bellows from the train engine -- transport to where my heart has been. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp has been honored many times by the Ekphrastic Challenge. Her book, When Dreams Were Poems, explores the relationship of words to art and nature. *She could locate only an auditory copy of Charles Wright's "Italian Days" -- what is a poem without a page? The name of the Hudson Railroad, owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, was changed to The Hudson River and New York Railway. ** Just a Job After ten years as a freight brakeman in Atlanta, I got laid off last week. Nothing personal, they told me. In Washington, even Hoover said things were bad. In August, Jane and I got married and moved into a one-room basement apartment. In October came Rose, our baby girl. Now, two months later, I lost my job. “I’ll look up North,” I said, as Jane sat on the edge of our bed. I’d heard that trainmen were needed there. “I’ll send money home.” “Promise me you’ll stop drinking, too.” Rose suckled on Jane’s breast. “It’s me or the bottle, like I’ve told you. Now we have a baby.” “I promise.” It was easy for me to say. I’d told her that lots before. When I arrived in New England, the yardmaster hired me on the spot. The rail workers that milled around his office grumbled. They likely wanted a friend to get the job, not me with my Southern accent. Afterward, I walked up a hill in a park and stood on some rocks. In the December rain, I looked at where I’d be working. The paper mill next to the river was big, but the nearby rail yard looked small. On the midnight shift, the engineer, conductor, and another brakeman joshed among themselves, but they didn’t speak much with me. They needed to see what kind of brakeman I was, I guessed. The conductor and I huddled at the top of the lead track that led downhill into the yard. With his lantern, he examined his switch list that gave information on the cars. “Whoa…lookee here. Three hopper cars. Coal. Haven’t seen it in years.” Sleet pelted our faces, and he cleared his throat. “Ride these into Track Three. It’s empty. After fifteen car lengths, tie ‘em down with a hand brake.” He put his gloves on. “Careful now. Another crew’s working on the other end of Three. It holds only ninety-two cars.” He returned to the engine. As the three cars started to coast, the rails groaned under their weight. On the rear car’s icy raised platform, I gripped the brake wheel. These three squat New York Central cars were heavy. Rain that day had saturated every chunk of coal in the open cars. Slushy flakes cut my visibility to a few car lengths. As I entered Three, snow-capped logs on flatcars on Tracks Two and Four whirred by. We were rolling at fast clip. That was okay. I’d done this lots before. But not in winter. At night. In a strange yard. Adrenaline flickered in my gut. In a minute or so, I’d be done and would walk back to the engine. I’d chug some calming whiskey from the pint bottle in my pant pocket. It’d be my first drink since leaving Atlanta. After ten car lengths into Three, I started to spin the brake wheel. I wasn’t used to wearing a heavy winter coat and such thick gloves. The brake shoes clamped on the wheel. It slid, as smoke and sparks spewed and screeched. If I got off and abandoned the cars, they’d only go faster. They’d kill men at the other end of Three. I’d get fired, or worse. But I’d promised Jane that I’d send money. I sprinted on icy ballast rock, over crossties, through sparks and steel-on-steel smoke, with only a few feet of clearance to the boxcars on Two. I was now at least forty car lengths into Three. These monsters wouldn’t stop. On the second car, I spun the brake wheel. Same thing! The sparks, smoke, and screech only doubled. We were going even faster. I raced to my final hope, the third and lead car. Wire from a car on Two snagged my sleeve. I stumbled but regained my footing. I climbed to the car’s ice-crusted handbrake and spun it into a blur. I was at least eighty cars deep into Three. In seconds, I’d crash. The cars slowed to a stop. The screech and sparks had halted, but acrid fumes began to blanket the ground, as the wheels pulsated with heat. I staggered into breathable air and sat on a rail on Two. I’d be able to send money home, after all. “Who’s there?” A lantern poked through the sleeting night. I had no breath left. “We’re…workin’ on…” I filled my lungs. “…the other end of the yard.” “Yeah, we’re on this end.” The brakeman pointed with his lantern beam. “We heard a helluva racket. Cars’ brakes must have frozen up. Then nothing.” A few car lengths from the coal hoppers stood black tank cars. “They’re…heavier than they look.” Gradually, I caught my breath. “That wet coal…almost got away from me.” Shaken, I walked back to the engine. “We need to go back into Three and drag the coal cars back to this end of the yard,” I said. “I was worried you couldn’t stop them.” The conductor shined his lantern on the switch list. “Says here they weigh a lot.” He looked up. “More than cars with lumber we usually see for the mill.” He glanced again at the list. “I didn’t check their weight, till after you’d started riding them into Three.” When the engine stopped near the coal cars, the conductor and I got off and stepped into the lingering smoke. He looked around, bent over to touch a rail, but recoiled. “Still hot.” He shook his head “Sorry. I had no idea. How…how did you stop ’em?” “Been doin’ this for ten years.” “Make the coupling and let’s get out of here.” The conductor got back on the engine. While hidden from the others, I climbed up a car ladder, reached into my back pocket, and tossed the unopened bottle onto the coal. “What was that?” The conductor flicked on the cab light when I returned to the engine. “Sounded like somethin’ broke.” Not broken, kept. “When’s payday? I need to send money home.” Bill Wilburn After college, Bill Wilburn worked as a news reporter for four years. He left as an Associated Press Writer to begin law school and a career as a lawyer. Bill has written scores of professional articles for law reviews and journals. He also freelanced op-ed pieces for The Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Times Herald, the Baltimore Sun, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Bill has written novels, short stories, and comic pieces. He is working on a memoir. Bill speaks fluent German, and lives with his wife in Chevy Chase, Maryland. ** Hudson River, 1903 Under a fog-shrouded landscape, I sit here on that granite ledge above Riverside Park where we spent endless hours in conversation. In tight embraces we witnessed bellowing puffs of dark gray smoke obscure a locomotive’s journey on the New York Central route, a journey I had hoped you would never take. Today, a bank of rain swollen clouds vies for my attention while a restless wind adds music to the day, reminds me of sad melodies we often heard. From this solitary post near two mature white birch, my mind recaptures moments we shared years ago. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019) copies are available [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 is a full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** Muddy Trails Alone is the sound of rain, spatter melting away- and the stories not left behind. The purpose is here and the purpose is now in swathe by the mossy cliffs- a crow caws at start of the day, definite as death. Where no one walks, the ground orchids span- as yet breathing, hopeful as yet. Journey through stone walls guiding the roadway into western ghats, the truth of muddy trails. Tunnel ahead 500 metres. Alone are the dreams and tales of belief- the placard reads ‘Mr. Alok’ at Pune airport, now as forty-eight years ago. A cloud burst striking weary waters in a youthful escapade. Abha Das Sarma Author's Note: My brother Alok, who passed away nine months ago, had gifted me my first flight ticket, for Poona (now renamed as Pune). 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, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Life As It Is From a craggy ridge slabs of slate grim and dark bare black branches stand guard a freight train trails clouds of steam a jetty leads into ghostly waters Horse pulling cart of coal scavanged from the littered foreshore boats lost in mist on the far shore loom wharves and warehouses rain dripping over man, beast,and machinery Gritty, urban scene Muted colours - greys, browns and black stark realism yet a sense of hard lived lives a picture of life as it's lived Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge who really enjoys this artist's ability to combine gritty realism with a sense of beauty in ordinary, working lives. ** The Spot I have been hiding in this hillside spot since I was seven years old. I discovered it when a group of neighbourhood boys rallied together a round of hide and seek. While they searched, I scrutinized the large men working on the trains. They were powerful and strong, covered in soot and sweat. Those boys never found me and ended up leaving me there as they dispersed at sunset for their homes, and I got my butt whooped for getting home so late and covered in dirt. But I didn’t care. All I cared about was that spot and the trains. I saved that spot just for me. I went every day after school just to watch the trains and their workers. When I got older, I would smoke cigarettes and watch as my puffs mingled with the train’s, making us one. I ended up on those tracks working 12-hour days for the last 21 years. When I would think of it down on the tracks, I would squint up at the spot wondering if there was a small kid who had replaced me there. With a family and house and work, I haven’t found respite at the spot since…well I don’t even know. It’s one of those things that happened in your life one last time, and the occasion seemed so ordinary that it was sure to happen again, but it never does. Like the last time I picked up my son before he got too tall and too independent to need carried around. I have been here every day this week, in my work clothes and carrying a paper bag with a ham sandwich, watching the younger guys still working. I follow their movements, my hand twitches. Tomorrow will be the day I tell my wife. It must be tomorrow, because the day after she’ll be expecting the paycheck to take to the bank. I flick the butt of the cigarette over the edge and light another. Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. |
Challenges
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