 Utopian Buildings, by Wenzel Hablik (Czechia) 1922 Home Sweet Ohm When Candy Land was first switched on And neon slithered through, The Gum Drop Mountain Passes shone In streaks of mauve and blue; The canes of sprouting Peppermint Bloomed scarlet, gold, and green, While Lollies gained a luscious tint Of juiced-up tangerine. The crooked House of Gingerbread Burst out with rosy swirls, The Ice Cream Floats lit up and spread Like stars for boys and girls, And all it needed was a game With somebody to play; And yet, since the Reactor came, The kids have kept away. Julia Griffin Julia Griffin has published in some online poetry magazines including The Ekphrastic Review. ** A Walk in a Park Told to walk in a park for our health and our spirits, we entered a city where skyscrapers grew toward the clouds and the sounds of the crowds were like wind in a forest, where we walked through a garden abloom with cafes, fragrant with coffee, blazing with colours of doorways and walkways, where fountains in circles gave us respite and healing, and lifted our spirits like a walk in a park. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart ** Well-Meant Steve clenched his jaw, wondering how many more people would assure him, “At least she’s not suffering anymore.” It was the crummiest consolation prize in the Kingdom of Cancer. The surgeons had pared Janie away bit by bit; the treatments had left her feeling enervated and had brought on a host of new horribles. At the end, the woman who used to race him up to the top of the mountain lacked the breath to trek to the restroom unaided. Now she wasn’t suffering. Because she wasn’t doing or feeling anything anymore. He stood, enduring the conga line of condolences, because that’s what you did after you buried your wife of thirty years, and here came one of Janie’s old co-workers. This time he was offered another all-time favorite: “She’s in a better place now.” He willed his head to nod, stretched his mouth into a thin-lipped smile. A better place, as though Janie was reclining on satin sheets in a five-star hotel instead of in a satin-lined casket. They all meant well, he knew. But he wished people would just say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” maybe offer a hug or arm-squeeze, leave it at that. Not try to spin this saddest of happenings into something positive, or at least something less dreadful. He watched them trail off, cluster together, away from the dead woman’s husband, and their faces softened as they talked. They belonged to a brighter world, a world of colour. As he saw another mourner approach he retreated in his mind to a place where he didn’t have to comfort these comforters, a corner where he could shroud himself in grey. Tracy Royce Tracy Royce’s writing has appeared in The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and ONE ART. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize, and was selected for Best Microfiction (2026). She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking and watching Richard Widmark films. Find her on Bluesky. ** Through a Crystal Ball, Darkly Metropopo, the city that never sleeps! It's President's Day in the month of Reaganuary, 2127, and this city has never looked finer. Buildings sport colourful frontages, reflecting a style popular around the fin de siècle, a quarter of a century earlier. President Jenner III, the latest life-sovereign from the Vance-Jenner-Swift dynasty, has decreed that the continent of NorAm use this schema for festivities throughout 2127. Their brood-sibling President Swift IV went Rococo for Eurolands, while their senior sibling, Vance Vance Jr, is trying a whole new thing in Afrikka, called Eclectico-Moderne. No-one knows what's happening in the major block of Indo-Sino-Rossiya since they went zero-dark-ten back in 2110 after the Sekmaca pandemic. Their only visible activities are the more or less constant rockets shuttling back and forth to the ports on the ISR half of the moon, and, for those bothering to look, other rockets they send farther into space. Back in Metropopo, Dadsi Manny and their son Lil Manny have ventured onto the streets. On the corner of Musk and Crypto they survey the tall Royal Blue Tower, symbolising the latest in virtual construction. Both wear fashionable looks-maxxed jagged angular faces and matching unikloth outfits. Just like horses and carriages before them, all mechanical street vehicles are long gone. Mass transit runs underground for any who need it and on special occasions like today a few pedestrians are granted permission to visit the streets. President Jenner III doesn't want the artistic merit of the civic landscape littered with private individuals' interpretations of fashion, marring the beauty of their vision, albeit one realised through machine intelligence and botserf labour. With unlimited energy and infinite resources the mechanisms of society have almost done away with the need for private individuals anyway. A few linger, pets almost, within the superstructure of culture and society. The ruling class, a small elite, traded huge financial bets with each other, to the extent that counting wealth became pointless, and the regular Joe's existence was priced out entirely. Still, a few heritage humans here and there add a little nostalgia=feel, hence the presence of Dadsi and Lil Manny in the scene. Despite their curtailed existence they show every sign of appreciation of president Jenner III's vision. They had better, or else. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands. She particularly enjoys ekphrastic writing and has had work published in The Ekphrastic Review's challenges previously. Her recent work appears in A Blot from the Blue, Poetry Scotland and The Madrid Review as well as Wild Roots, an anthology from The Nuthatch Press raising funds for the UK bird conservation charity, RSPB. ** The Door My Mother Left Open Wenzel is six when he looks into the crystal—castles inside the stone, mountains made of light. He spends fifty years trying to build his way back in. I am six when Goono arrives, patient as soft summer weather, never bored, his voice something I hear and feel at the same time, a frequency the body knows before the mind finds words for it– others say imaginary friend, spirit guide. My mother has Baa. She leaves the door open. I walk through it every morning. School makes Goono fainter. Not gone. He learns to travel lighter -- moves into Benjamin, the cats, the crows who come each morning because I ask them to. Magic with an unexpected persistence, still waiting for the next child who knows how to look. Now, I stand before Hablik’s painting -- electric chaos, rainbows, stars, an architectural drawing done by an artist on LSD —and underneath, a blueprint: the world as a six-year-old sees it, with the benefits of being grown. Some things crack you open early and spend a lifetime keeping you that way. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow. ** Returning It’s not the home we leave but the utopia we allow while away creating space between our enemies and us someone stretches and pipes an electric buzz over familiar patterns aligns pots of plastic flowers melting in the glow hangs high rises over saturating and exposing stars and rainbows Until everyone's the same except for those of us who go to the extremes and burn sand into all the glass that distorts and distracts us from believing the memories we receive in the homes we can no longer see Brendan Dawson Brendan Dawson is an American poet and veteran. Brendan’s work is shaped by combat experience and military service with a focus on exploring the ethical weight of leadership and the liminal spaces during and after conflict. Brendan has published widely in literary journals and is currently completing an MFA in poetry. He is at work on a collection of poems centered on his departure from a career in the military and return to civilian life. ** Big Colourful Utopian Constructions I hold the elevator doors ajar while a nattily dressed man enters. I press the close door button once he reaches the back centre. “You know,” he says. “That’s a dummy.” I pull my hand back, “What?” “It’s there to make you feel better.” I ride down with my mouth shut. Our corporate grey building should include more placebos I think as we descend, and this is where my mind goes: Praise for a lofty atrium flooded with colour and light. Praise for five massive stars tumbling up out of sight. Praise for bridges of rainbows that lead to nowhere at all. Praise for radiant dreams pouring in a prismatic waterfall. Praise for Guzmania flowers that flame like giant torches. Praise for columns and poles and whimsical midair porches. Then with a gentle thunk the car we’re in levels and lands, and though my vision has vanished respair and serenity stand. Lara Dolphin A descendant of immigrants, Lara Dolphin lives with her family among the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania on the ancestral land of the Susquehannock/Iroquois people. She has written three chapbooks In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, and At Last a Valley. She, like countless others, hopes for a world filled with greater peace. ** The Night the Stars Fell "Hublik's 'Creative Forces' were etchings portraying a voyage through an imaginary universe of crystalline structures representing the accomplishments of his career." Timothy O. Benson et al., Expressionist Utopias, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001; p. 210. Wikipedia Drawings of the war were ink-black & white, leached of the colours of nature as if the dark-cloaked figure of Elektra had convinced the artist that paternal love existed in temples and flying cities. When he spoke of The Great Depression, he told her it was, to him a crystalline chasm; a mirror reflection of inner reality -- the blinding hues of his heart and soul when a Utopia was born on canvas. Even the infra-structure of the cities were neon- bright; and nestled among the colorful girders, stars became the heroes of myth -- Elektra in the arms of her lost father before war was the technology of heartbreak. Time would not stop, as time will not. The world had known Symbolism, German Expressionism and two World Wars. Now Elektra's memory of childhood was the pain she felt when two parents -- mother and father -- reached down to kiss a child on the playground faces filled with love though their pockets were empty. Why did America insist on repetition economic fluctuation so intense not everyone could survive? & why was her ancient name au courant, automotive and innovative, her name captured in electric cars? When she opened her grandfather's19th century wardrobe, she thought of Hublik first a cabinet maker; how a flapper girl's Utopia was the freedom of her grand- mother's dress, gold and silk and fringe (the kind of fabric Hublik's lady, a designer, might have used) wrapped up carefully in tissue. Words of wisdom about the origin of film came to her as her fingers touched the sheen of the past... wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, magicians. Come and dream with me... If stars could fall from an aquamarine cloud cover -- though skies inevitably turn to storm -- wouldn't Utopias be washed by rivers blest by suns of home? Laurie Newendorp Honoured multiple times by The Ekphrastic Review's challenges, Laurie Newendorp is impacted by Symbolism and the Symbolists whose world prioritized dreams, the imagination, emotions and spirituality over everyday depictions of reality -- though reality be harsh, as was the horror of WWI when Rupert Booke wrote "The Soldier": "If I should die, think only this of me...There shall we in that rich earth a richer crust concealed/ Gave once her followers to love... Washed by rivers, blest by suns of home." The quote with wizards, mermaids and adventurers is from Ben Kingsley as Papa Georges in the film, Hugo Cabret. ** Face at the Edge In crystal gazing Mohs saw more, so many facets from their core, fresh angles that revealed insight to chasms, temples, city flights, for crystallography owns planes. Geology, like meteorites, here sight of dreams within these sites a spatial mystery encased, designs of architecture faced - Utopia, More satire here? Combined, these visions still must stand, planned building founded, rock not sand; a full palette, designer ware, metropolis, artistic flair, Bohemian by birth, no more. 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 ** Joy on Paper Joyful joyful! With his set of draftsman’s pens, architect, Hablik has created a paper city, two dimensional only, sadly, full of strong straight lines, enhanced with nested shapes and curves reflecting his art deco passion. It’s as though heaven settled on his city, stars perch on rooftops. The in between places are filled with light-- no dark alleys here. A summer garden’s myriad colours meet and meld with blues of summer’s varied skies. Painted, pointed structures seem ready to take off into that sky but even if they remain grounded the painting propels our viewing eyes into the colors, the forms and shapes of his expressed joy. Here, inside this picture we can leave behind earth’s darkness, rest in beauty, peace, joy-- all that is necessary is for us to “pencil” ourselves, our thoughts into the scene he’s set. Joy will be ours! Joan Leotta Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Internationally published as essayist, poet, short story writer, novelist, she’s a multiple nominee for Pushcart and Best of Net. Publications include One Art, Lothlorien, The Mackinaw, Ekphrastic Review, and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. She also performs stories for youth and adult audiences. Her story programs highlight food, family, and strong women. Presenting as Louisa May Alcott she highlights the author’s development as a writer, activism, and time as Civil War Nurse. Joan’s taught storytelling and writing, for the North Carolina Poetry Society, NC Writers Network, ND Humanities, and the London Arts-Based Research Center ** U to pi a forgotten land Think of all the wonders you might find when you fly into a colourful dream: all the colours used in the design from subdued pastels of lilac turquoise primrose yellow and jade all fade into the distance as if from memory; the mind not strong enough to hold onto them everything you puzzle over try to remember growing up growing older they’re all still there in their primary glory the mountains straddled by rainbows showing where a crock of gold must be but never was crossing great causeways of stepping stones in scarlet basalt erupting into a sky of desperate thoughts dispersed by waterfalls full of shifting blues and greens seen through eroded valleys truncated in black spurs softened by white mist that has taken hold of memory as well it might not to dwell on what you can’t find— go ahead find the next stars that cross the infirmament shooting glances in vague directions explicitly in recognition before stepping back and opening Schroeder’s box where a colourful trick might be performed in wonder and find today what’s inside is very much alive with memories before converting into the cave of indigo darkness unlit until a candle breaks through in golden spark-like stars that flame-on-orange-sunflower-white heat not to be touched nor regressed back to “don’t touch it will burn” instructions; in this colourful find, utopia doesn’t need reminding all light and dark are kind upon the eye retrieving all the commotion of the fun of the fair all the circus tent emotion and flair seen from so deep in memory that they are lost while others hope that old yellow bricks and the red swoosh on shoes might lead the feet not to ‘no place’ but to where pi equates to going a full circle and a return to home— forgotten in all but technicolour dreams Peter R Longden Peter R Longden grew up in Rotherham, South Yorkshire before moving to Coventry in 1981 for a long career working with young people. Now retired, poetry is a significant part of his life, both writing and reading. He is still looking to publish a first chapbook, having had individual poems published by 9th O’Bheal Five Words Competition (2022); two poems published by The Ekphrastic Review in 2024 and April 2026; and two ekphrastic poems in the Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletters in 2024 and 2025. Other poems have been published in local anthologies. Writing poetry began over 25 years ago, recording how to see the world and what makes it the way it is. Peter is married to Sally with two grown-up boys (and a two-year-old granddaughter). ** The Blinding Lights Do Blind So you see the colourful lights the busyness the sounds of people crammed together they’re happy they say going about their day to day the buildings tall the lined lanes leading with purpose one must assume the bridges spanning necessity to extravagance but you don’t see what lies beneath the neon lights the daily lives the commerce and construction down there somewhere rests a foundation laid long before flat and solid and gray and made of sturdy stuff and the blood and bones of those who built it so this space could exist the ones who made the spires and steeples and streets and everything enjoyed by the inhabitants of this utopian infrastructure they’re happy they say but what else lies beneath the facade of glowing glass and phosphorescent fabrication things unseen because though necessary they might detract from the dazzling display and no one wants to see that Joe Coy Joe Coy (he/him) has always been fascinated by how a few words and a few lines can say so much. His poems explore themes of nature, spirituality, social and political issues, hope, love, and connection and have been selected for publication in Anomaly, Altar Literary, Epistemic Literary, and anthologies by Wandering Words and Gorgon's Gaze Press. ** Equality The agents of equilibrium are no longer passive metaphors- colors beneath this mighty architecture seek governance, wishing the eye meets the surface in ways that transform. Neural activation creates a balance between life and death. Reaction-Diffusion systems operate at the highest level. They explain everything- don't you know? Emergent structures of justice, plain as day, plain as sight: a flat surface becomes… phase space Art and ethics co-evolve, nonlinearity loops, autopoiesis breathes- the boundary holds. Suspended, complete. MWPiercy Michael W. Piercy: "At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction, you will find my work, you will find me. Observing memories and the present moment , thinking with an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology, and Science are core of my writing - I have found that I am a synthesizer. Managing ideas which do not always cohere. A manipulator of ideas." ** Spinning a Vision Frenzied orange lines zigzag into the sky clashing with pink, royal blue-- colors rarely set side by side. The buildings surprise me, Their lines bent, flowing forming rainbow arches which soften the field, shifting as the morning and late afternoon light burns and fades. What would a life inside these walls contain? Notes breathe from a saxophone long after sunset. A novelist charts undiscovered lands. A young mother shows her child new forms, opening paths for a growing mind. A grandmother, not quite ready to sit and rock with a cup of tea, pulls her oils out of storage-- smearing the burnt orange next to the royal blue and muddying the green just a touch To make us think: now why did she do that? Wenzel Hablik you spun these magical castles and mountains from a childhood crystal, trying to reproduce those images throughout your life. You hoped that painted surfaces would offer comfort, A place of healing and peace for those emerging from a world plunged into a war, You offered a futuristic vision, throbbing with joyful colours, if only people were brave enough to walk toward this vision, and enter. Celeste DeSario Celeste DeSario taught English at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, NY for 37 years. Celeste received teaching honours from SUNY and the University of Texas, and now focuses on writing her own poetry and fiction. Her recent poetry appears in The New Verse News, The Changing Times, The SportsScribe Literary Magazine, and The Ekphrastic Review. ** Observing the World Through the Fantastical Those in crystal palaces view the world in kaleidoscopic detail, each brightly tinctured prism, its pallor playful and bright, highlights an ideal existence devoid of deadly conflict. The artist begs us to focus on aesthetic optimism, he imagines his own slice of utopia as a star and rainbow paradise. Feast your eyes on reflective beauty and feel the peace within you unfold. Elaine Sorrentino Elaine Sorrentino, author of Belly Dancing in a Brown Sweatsuit (Kelsay Books, 2025) has been published in journals such asQuartet Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Gyroscope Review,Sparks of Calliope, Sheila-Na-Gig, Poetry Porch, Ekphrastic Review, and Haikuniverse. She is facilitator of the Duxbury Poetry Circle in Duxbury, MA. ** After Utopian Buildings, by Wenzel Hablik Sunlight beyond bright it must to show radiance of such colour bound to future dreams of ideal where colours replace drab concrete and shout flowers joy within angles curve skyward leading us toward the love in our hearts peaceful creation of where we'll dwell in harmony within and without a dream unrealized. Daniel Warren Brown Daniel Warren Brown is a retired special education teacher who 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 Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, most recently Jerry Jazz Musician, Chronogram Magazine and KINDS OF COOL an anthology of jazz poetry.. He has hosted a youtube channel POETRY FROM SHOOKS POND and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson's Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23. Daniel writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination. ** The Shift It’s a whole other world out here. Colours I have never seen. Bioluminescence. Or perhaps my vision has changed. For I have changed. Something intrinsic happened when I left Earth’s atmosphere. Some inner shift of matter, some casting off of skin. Everything here is dizzying motion. I search for the soul in things and instead I’m thrown back on mine. Only to question my here-and-nowness. But I am real, I was borne of Earth, I am just elsewhere. Where elsewhere is remains unclear. My chaperone has not told me. Or guide, or whatever he is. I don’t know what to call him. He is an agent of some kind. Humanoid. But not human. Another race. Tall, albino-fair, with skin that’s sparkling or scaly. I haven’t seen him in full light yet, or a light I can call earthly. I almost lose my footing in this realm. The walls keep shifting, as does the ground beneath me. My sense of balance is dashed. As if I have sea legs. Sea of tranquillity legs. Except I’m not tranquil. Neither am I agitated. If I had to give it a name, it would be disassociated. For what may have been a long time – time? what even was that here? there was only the moment, the assault of the senses – I stand before a spinning wheel of rainbow persuasion as four-dimensional stars pop and gather. I come to realise they are entities of their own with a consciousness that is different to mine. They buzz around my head as if examining me and make a high-pitched whining as they zip to and fro. My, God, the spectacle of this place! It is an endless morphing. My mind is adrift with the strangeness. I am grappling both with my new vision and sights I have never seen. It is like being stuck in some unearthly arcade, one which offers a promise of joy but is really just an elaborate trompe l’oeil. There’s that word again – unearthly. How can I not compare everything to my Mother? And this place is like being utterly present within a psychedelic trip of multiplicitous dimensions that my brain is trying to fathom. As if I am more liquid than solid and close to fainting – My chaperone catches me. I stare up into the deepest eyes I have ever seen. No whites, just a blue ocean. Like portals. I am lost all over again. He seems to know how I’m feeling, it is something his race can do. He averts his gaze. You’ll get used to it, he telepaths. It’s a lot to take in, I understand. When do I go back to Earth? I ask. I don’t like it here. He looks at me with a small, sad smile and says nothing. Which answers my question. But why? I am bewildered. Caught in the bewilderness of a terrifying, new reality. Earth is no longer the home you once knew, he tells me. Because he knows I only want the truth. I feel the grief of this but at a distance, as if I am examining the thought in mid-air. I know I’ll feel the tearing within later, and I would rather delay that. For my heart will know it is broken. Wherever I am, I will always be Earth Child. Estranged. For Earth had been besieged as I left, from all sides. War had broken out, like nothing humanity had ever known. And as I was torn from the atmosphere of my Mother in the ship that had materialised out of nowhere in the smoke-thick night, I could see the fire, the endless fire, so much fire. New races had arrived, non-human, and they meant us harm, had wreaked a savage havoc. But there were others too who had intervened, who looked like the man-creature I was with, and they had stolen us away. Those who hadn’t perished. And it had been a cacophony of screams and explosions, and a deafening unmaking of all that was whole and good. I could not think of Earth as a dead planet, I could not. It could not be true. I switch off the memory and file it away. I can’t deal with it right now. Maybe this is all a dream. Maybe I could ask my guide to help me believe this is all a dream and that I will one day return to Earth. My heart needed the lie, if only for a while. He seems to sense my disorder for he makes a valiant attempt to distract me. Let me show you the Solaris Dynamo, he telepaths. I think you’ll like it. I have no idea what he means but I think he means well. And then I am filled with a sudden longing for the ocean. Oh, Earth. Is there an aquarium? I ask. He smiles and says nothing. Kindly, or maybe it’s just the way he is programmed, he waits until I am ready before we move on. For I am not moving in a way that makes sense, my feet are not on the ground. Rather, I am hovering and able to move by the power of thought alone. Tell me something true, I say, as we move through the new realm. Tell me something real and good. He turns to me and is silent for a time. You are real and good, he says. And you are safe with me. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a neurodivergent British Pakistani poet, writer and fine artist based in Birmingham, UK. She has been widely published online and in print. You can usually find her surrounded by books, making art or putting one word in front of the other. You can also find her on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir or www.ninasnazir.substack.com where she regularly shares poetry, art and book reviews. ** If Fritz Lang Had Consulted Wenzel Hablik At the Cafe Arco, they’d remark on the variegated tones of wet cobblestone. The pink chicken served on Vltava river cruises. The rainbow over Charles Bridge connecting Old Town with Mala Strana. The golem, ready to rise from the Altneu Synagogue, hands raised to wreak havoc if summoned. The spiked spires of Town Hall and St. Vitus. The astronomical clock in Old Town Square. Kafka’s motorbike navigating the circumference of his own rotating metallic head in New Town. Lang would lament the oppression of his workers. Hablik would offer them balance in his new utopia. Together with writer Karel Čapek’s creation of the word robot, they could construct this utopia together. Lang would insist on Metropolis in colour. Barbara Krasner Film buff Barbara Krasner majored in German language and literature. She spent a month in Prague on a fiction fellowship in 2011 and visited all of Kafka's haunts while studying the Czech language. She wrote about her Czech experiences in Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** What I Realize Now When I was eighteen, I took a few hits of LSD to boost my high on hash oil, beer, and pot, but looking now at Hablik’s psychedelic worlds, I realize no drug trip holds half the wonderment of an artist’s unleashed imagination. Take, for instance, the big colourful stars in his painting, Utopian Buildings, that float around rainbows of a dozen hues, and the kaleidoscopic mazes that lead to mind-altering avenues with no exits; or the flowers with eyes and pointy crowns on oblong tables that form intoxicating patterns on unpopulated streets. Hallucinogenic striata to the left and right of arches mix with crystalline tunnels that lead to fading walls or to a mauve sky, like what the visionary saw above the peaks on his solitary treks up the slopes of the Alps. And about that drug trip of mine -- the way it ended: two guys saw me swinging around a city street sign pole and offered help. They took me to a rehab centre, and I’ve stayed clean and sober for forty-nine years. Gregory E. Lucas Gregory E. Lucas writes fiction and poetry. His short stories and poems have appeared in Sparks of Calliope. Rue Scribe, Blueline, and elsewhere. He lives on Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina. Follow him on X.com @GregoryELucas. ** where bad cities go to die, that’s where I’ll be the rainbow will take you by the hand on that day when the buildings will reveal their colours you will wake up, and the sun will be a disco ball your language will explode into seventeen cases, dative and inessive giggling in delight technicolor falcons will swallow those new words today you see the clammy rain of suffocating Wednesday afternoons in August today you stir too much sugar into your espresso, then let it go cold today your pants stick to a brown plastic chair and you feel embarrassed when getting up today concrete is grey, the graffiti half washed out, the train seats cracked and tired but you dreamed the rainbow will take you by the hand on that day when the buildings will reveal their colours and you still hope Eva Lantsoght Eva Lantsoght is a multilingual poet from Belgium, who lives in the Netherlands and Ecuador. Her work has appeared in Katern, Museum de Mindere, De Optimist, Spillwords, Hesiodos Flow Fest, has been awarded with the Soetendaele poetry prize and Harelbeke poetry prize, and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review. ** The Commission “I expect you to paint a magnificent picture of my utopian city,” the client said to me. I didn’t respond. No matter how many times I encountered a self-important client, I struggled to be polite. So, where possible, I spoke little. “Well?” the client said. “You paint pictures of buildings, which are then hung in their lobbies, don’t you? I’m told such art is popular. Are you hesitating to do what I ask because I want a painting of not just one building but the entirety of the wonderful city I’ve constructed?” I took a deep breath and said, “I accept the commission.” And when the client turned and strode away, I muttered, “Let us hope we never have to meet again.” Afterwards, on the way to the airport and my flight home, I asked the taxi driver to stop. I intended to return soon with my paraphernalia of brushes, oil paints, easel and canvas; first, though, I wanted to look again at this city that had appeared so quickly in what had been a wilderness. As I stared, I found it impossible to distinguish between the living accommodation, offices and factories. Surely the client is delusional, I reflected, when he describes this place as utopian? That word–utopian– stayed with me. Once back in my studio, I consulted my books on art and found a reproduction of Ambrosius Holbein’s 1516 depiction of Thomas More’s Utopia. In this woodcut of an imaginary, flawless island, I could see no people other than a sailor on a ship. This is intriguing, I thought. Is the sailor approaching the apparently deserted island and viewing it with apprehension? If so, is Holbein suggesting that no one can, or should, live in a so-called utopia? At this precise moment, my phone pinged. I had a message from the client’s executive assistant: Ensure that in your painting of our city you have people gazing at the buildings in wonder. That would certainly be different to Holbein, I thought and continued to leaf through my books. Before long, I came across Wenzel Hablik’s 1922 vision of utopian constructions. For several hours, I studied and admired the colours and shapes. Then I reflected upon my career and body of work. Some months later, I met the client’s executive assistant in the lobby of the tallest building in the new city. “You took your time,” the executive assistant said. “My boss likes things done quickly. So, where’s the painting?” I gestured towards a bubble-wrapped canvas propped against a wall. “Do I have to arrange for it to be hung?” the executive assistant said. “Not my job.” The executive assistant sighed. “Okay, you can go. Send me your invoice.” I never received payment for the painting. Between them, Holbein and Hablik had inspired me to use colours and forms that bore no relation to the client’s utopian city. I also omitted people. No further corporate commissions have ever come my way. I don’t miss them. Instead, my imagination guides me. K. J. Watson K. J. Watson’s stories and poems have appeared on the radio; in comics, magazines and anthologies; and online. ** Metamorphoses It takes only a century for a shy lean utopia to turn into a loud obese dystopia. A mere geometric nightmare is mirrored as skyscrapers en masse (whatever that means) dominating even fleeting rainbows. Right-full-of-themselves angles cut myriads of oval apples in accord multiplying the mythical discord. Madly leaping army of lines cris-cross the foreground in an instance while crazy colors compete to better blindfold the perspective – indeed – what is mutating real is a bedazzled world sans human horizon sans divine heaven – you can neither fly not shut the missing sky to the advancing globally dancing skeletal utopia turning corpulent dystopia. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dimitrova writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. Her poems are often honoured by The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** Explosion of Colours This is what I feel Colorful words that explode While I am writing Jean Bourque. Jean lives in Montreal. For him, writing is like painting.
1 Comment
Dwight L. Roth
6/21/2026 02:21:17 pm
A great city scape. I love the bright colors in the painting! It looks like it could have been done in digital, but not back in 1922! Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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