 A Mad Tea Party, by Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (USA) c. 1934? The Journal of Zelda The devil is the rabbit. And I am the fallen angel to whom he resurrects. I am melting, No! Falling, that’s what it is, I am falling! Yoohoo! Zelds! Tick Tock. I am following the rabbit. Hello Alice! It speaks, I listen, intent. Tick tock. Its eyes are red. His eyes are red, red like the devil’s. Red like my Scottie’s bowtie, the one I bought him in Spain. It was hot that day, hot today too. Hot in this tunnel. Why am I in a tunnel? They put me in the tunnel, that’s what it is. They’re always trying to clip my wings. But the rabbit… the rabbit wants to help me. Dance, Alice! Dance! Dance for us! It is my birthday— no, it isn’t! But is it? I wonder… My feet hurt. Red again. Red. Red. Red. Like rubies. Great glittering rubies scattered amongst the wet earth. And deeply buried in the white fur. In the mirror, too. I spot the mirror, the red. Spot! Spots! I am dizzy. It must be from all the falling. Red is the thermometer they poke under my tongue. Very dizzy… I dream. I am hot again. I might as well lie here to die. His fur is soft. This could be my coffin. I smile. What a pleasant dream. This one makes you larger, but this one makes you small. Very, very small. That’s what I must have done. I’ve taken the one that makes you feel very, very small. I lied to Scottie again. I’m fine (I am small! Help me, I am small again, Scottie!) I am fine, my love, do not wrinkle your brow at me (for God’s sake, get me out of this tunnel, I am burning alive, Scottie!) I do love the way you look when you’re angry (oh, not at me, not again, Scottie, please don’t let them do this to me, I have to dance for him) We shall have dinner at 4 o’clock, that sounds perfectly fine to me, darling (I hope it is the one that makes me big, I am tired, so tired of being this small) I do love that hat, darling where did you get it (is it your birthday again, who bought him that hat I wonder). Tick Tock, Alice! Oh dear, the game was rigged, and I’ve run out of time, I’m afraid. Tick tock. Tawni Bridenball Tawni Bridenball earner her Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. ** The Dance of the Mad Hatter An Alabama belle coasts, dances effortlessly across the floor. Gone is hesitance, any introverted jitters killed. A lieutenant, mesmerized, now offers politely to quench raging sarsaparilla thirst to this uplifting, vivacious whirlwind. Examine: Why? Zelda! Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet of ten collections, including Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025), The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (Dancing Girl Press, 2026), and the forthcoming The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026), and Memory Collector(Kelsay Books, 2027). Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** what linger becomes he last notes of a grateful dead song the jester the joker the candlestick maker lighting candles breathing fire daffodils yellow eyes drying from the inside out flying notes from a blossoming organ keys splayed westward while you look east making madness while fingering cup and teapot in the lazy last days pine and white orchids play in the soil streams do we remember spring and have the parties ended too soon dance with me juggle my love sweep me over green grass high hopes and let the dreams pass hover and wave enough to light the day and darken their eyes only then can we see the morning light mike sluchinski mike sluchinski reads vonnegut's harrison bergeron religiously. he’s grateful to be part of heartwood literary magazine, dublin poetry walk '24 & '26, superfan/dear easy mac, FLARE: flagler review, scifaikuest, tulane review, mantis, failed haiku, inlandia journal, kaleidotrope, eternal haunted summer, the wave (kelp), the literary review of canada, the coachella review, welter, poemeleon, lit shark, proud to be vols. 13 & 14, the ekphrastic review, meow meow pow pow, kelp journal, the fib review, south florida poetry journal (soflopojo), freefall, pulpmag, in parentheses, and more coming! ** Save me a Waltz Weltering around in my lingo like naked legs, a bedrock in sherds, blossoming, for I party daily, seeing that time of abundance, of reck-less, needs prophecies, a dance. Wine maybe. No scarlet shoes or masked bogeyman may faze me. The eat-me cake’s icing looks praisingly promising, honey mustard my fave. We look like castles gathering, on this check-checkered tartan, yet, it is about drinking, till strength less, till rough ready eurythmics, hands stretching. Addressing. This is not just madness, we aware of falling water-week-days, of blackness in strict ditches ahead. Yes, let’s dress up best, and refuse to be bored. Kate Copeland Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to linguistics, her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review, and runs workshops & open-mics for several writing networks. Find her poems @ https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ & TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Metphrastics, Hedgehog Press [a.o.]; her audio-poetry-book Caterpillar Tracks will go public in autumn, thanks to WildfireWords. ** Pantalone Tea Party Freeze Gunilla and I held mad tea parties amidst rock pools during low tide as seagulls flew overhead, eyes fixed on our fingers that held cookies or bread sticks they’d dive bomb, snatch, then gobble-down eight feet from our wet tablecloth, viewing us as an easy mark for food. Tossing seashells at cautious grey and white sky pirates circling above and taunting below, adjusting flamboyant clothes of silk and cotton we’d kick sand from red leather boots to our long pointed-toed poulaines then uttered dramatic oaths of love and devotion. When high tides rolled in, we threw party plates, cups and cake to the centre of our checkered tablecloth, pulled and tied four corners splashing through pools quoting favorite Lewis Caroll lines from Through the Looking Glass, yet like Zelda Fitzgerald, we left our party unfulfilled. Sterling Warner A Washington-based author, poet, educator, and Pushcart Nominee, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in such literary magazines, journals, and anthologies The Raven’s Perch, Lothlórien Poetry Journal, Ekphrastic Journal Review, Bewildering Stories, and Verse-Virtual. Warner has written over a dozen volumes of poetry/fiction including Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps: Poems, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci, Abraxas, Gunills’s, Garden: Poetry, Seaboard Magic (2026)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories. He currently writes, hosts “virtual” poetry/fiction readings, turns wood, and enjoys fishing and boating along the Hood Canal. ** Tumble Girl At the treeline Of the forest See the dull and Ticking tunnel I will tumble ‘Til I'm trampled Down the chute And up the ladder Rungs on wrongways Ringing singing Rhyming war-songs Marching feet Flags a-wavin' Teapot shaking Clattered vapours Whistle heat The checkerboarded Mad magician Flicks the runner From the table Tumbles dishes Tumble-wishing Make me bigger Make me tall Blooded hearts Melt rivers rising Still the pawns go on Colliding Merely checking Are you near me Are you playing Are you bored? Antling insects Inching upwards After parapeted Picnics Kick the bishop From the rampart Card trick trial Heads a-roll Tapping feet and Ticking timepiece Rushing hurry Hushing wait ‘Til the hearts On all my armies Melt the castle Cats and dishes Wishes magics Garden games, ‘Til the river Soothes me slowly Through shivved shivers Dripped with paint, ‘Til the crystalline White palace Waves me, waves Away, away. Zoe Kelton Zoe Kelton is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. Her work has recently appeared in the 2026 Whatcom Writes Anthology. ** A Mad Tea Party Look how well I hold the pose — pink dress fanned across the cloth like I planned this, like the cups didn't just fly from their saucers mid-sentence, like something gray and many-handed isn't pulling at everything I own. I have always known how to fall beautifully. Ask anyone. He stands at the edge of it — top hat, red boots, ringmaster -- watching the way men watch when they have arranged the weather and called it fate. The trees don't move. The castle holds its red. Behind us, the path goes somewhere I stopped believing in around 1930. What they call madness I call Tuesday, I call the creature that lives in the marriage, in the diagnosis, in the century's long idea of what a woman is for. It has so many hands. I have learned to pose among them. Call it a picnic. Call it a party. I painted it, didn't I? I put myself right in the centre and made it beautiful and signed my name. 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. ** Messed Up Again It’s one a.m., I don’t know where I’ve been. Dorothy said to meet her in Emerald City, but I’ve lost my way. The Tin Man’s heart is broken, and I can't run in my ballet shoes. It’s one am, I’ve drunk too many cups of tea. Did my date drug me? Will I ever be the same? I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’ve been. Mother always said, be careful with your drink. Now I’m lost in the Haunted Forest with a crazy dancing cat. I can’t find the Yellow Brick Road or the rabbit hole I fell through. I should have listened to Mother because it’s one a.m. again. I don’t know where I’ve been. I don’t know where I am. Barbara Edler Barbara Edler is a semi-retired college composition instructor who lives in southeast Iowa. She said, "I love to explore my past mistakes and I write to heal my inner pain. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald's painting A Mad Tea Party reminds me of the many poor decisions I made when I was particularly young and not too discerning." ** Wonderland from A to Z You’ve spilled tea on your pink dress, Alice-Zelda, and your golden ringlets dangle in disarray. Extra cups lie scattered on the blanket, although there are only three other guests, muscular demons lusting to seize you. Especially the Mad Hatter, looming tall and menacing in his red cape and boots. You have to watch out for him. But your eyes roll helplessly back inside your head. After this party you won’t be going home to the white fairyland castle on the western hill or to the gloomy brick castle in the east. After your high life and all your adventures you’re going somewhere else. fire in the asylum sleeping dormouse Ruth Holzer Ruth Holzer is the author of ten chapbooks, most recently, On the Way to Man in Moon Passage (dancing girl press) and Float (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Freshwater, POEM, Slant and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she has won the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Prize, the Tanka Splendor Award and the Ito En Art of Haiku Contest Grand Prize. ** … party in the park … they’re parked for their party on the avenue du bois maybe Boulogne maybe another wonderland (somewhere the white rabbit wasn’t invited); red castle versus the white rook a chess well-matched on the chequered mat nearby the mad hatted one all suave and swagger in suited and booted in a mix of Lycra and latex masquerading as master of ceremony black topper that jaunts he flaunts at tilted angle is that an armadillo role playing possum behind the cat fresh from a West Ender a Jellical cat perhaps Munkustrap not Bustopher Jones who’s too busy being upper- class and about town entertaining an Alice in a strawberry sorbet dress of too much tulle and pink ballet shoes who tips tea on her knee which is chai to her chi (which is all Greek to me!) while the cup juggling hare, unaware of the month, reveals himself a fraud dropping the cups on an Alice’s head to the audience of chopsticks’ rapturous applause: it’s a tumultuous picnic party of fairytale folk by any measure mistaken for a farce a treasured midsummer’s day dream 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). ** In This Style No Price "This tea is too hot!" froths the Hare, "But it's given me muscles to spare, And it's added, for free, A petite extra me, In a salmony flapper dress. There!" Poor Alice, beginning to melt, In a dress which is more like a belt, Huge cups on each side, Is remarking, wide-eyed, On the curious cards she's been dealt. "It's clearly a chequerboard world," She ponders, "though vexingly swirled; This yellowy Dormouse, Looks simply enormouse: It's more like a pangolin (curled). "This party's a failure, I feel; There isn't a trace of a meal And I'm certain my neck Is already a wreck; How I wish I'd been left with Tenniel! "The Hare or the Dormouse: now which Should I switch with, commanded to switch? All right, then: the latter. (Don't mention the Hatter; He's out. The poor son-of-a-bitch.)" Ruth S Baker Ruth S Baker has published in a few poetry journals. She has a special love for animals and visual art. ** To Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Regarding A Mad Tea Party Life became exhausting dance with purity and passion, fullness of creative zeal and emptiness to fashion sacred as a wonderland of paper-thin dimension, water colour artistry becoming intervention edifying troubled soul dividing its attention seeking to be recognized but finding reprehension weary from forlorn embrace mystifying grief with grace. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Alice at Tea “You are most welcome to join us,” the Hatter said. The table was set, teapot, teacups, and what appeared to be tiny petit fours on a small silver platter. “Thank you,” Alice did a brief curtsey, looking around for others. “How many are you expecting?” “Oh,” said the Hatter. “Maybe some, maybe none.” “Well,” said Alice, “How many did you invite?” The Hatter gave her a haughty sniff, “Why no one, of course!” “But you just now invited me!” “I most certainly did not!” he said, as the two of them sat. “I said you are welcome to attend, but I did not invite you!” Alice was flustered. “But how can you have a tea party if no one is invited?” “I’ll be there,” he huffed. “Isn’t that the important thing?” He sniffed again. “If anyone else cares to attend, it’s up to them!” Alice frowned. “How is it a party if you’re the only one there?” she asked. “That’s a stupid remark,” the Hatter replied, cocking his head in a most officious manner. “Just how many does it take?” “Well,” she said, “I imagine more than just the two of us! I always had at least three.” With that, the Hatter stood abruptly, grasping the edge of the table. “Well, then!” he exclaimed, “this is not a party, after all!” With that he upset the table, and the teapot, teacups, cakes, and Alice went flying. “Oh, dear!” she said, “are you Mad?” Ron Wetherington Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction, prose poems and literary essays. Read some of his work at https://www.rwetheri.com/ ** Through the Blue Dusk (a cento) It was the summer she slid down the bannisters, lived in a blue velvet trunk. A sudden rain fell, passing through like a blurring hand over a wet picture. Masquerading as herself, she made an awful struggle to hang onto the past. Not very long after, the good times had come to an end. One morning, with very little warning, she stood in the skeleton sun, possessed, Then made a long, slow gurgle like water running out of a bathtub. Night lends a majesty to experiences of whirling, raw emotion. Under elms streamed the incognitos, the figurants of current scandals, The taint of hysteria that goes so often with her kind of life. Lost in intricate fragility, She found herself in the magic palace, a resting place for the fine and glittering. Tracy Royce *Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, famous flapper, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a writer and artist in her own right, died in a fire during what would turn out to be her final institutionalization. This cento is constructed from excerpts of her 1932 novel, Save Me the Waltz (written in part while she was hospitalized); three short stories: “A Couple of Nuts” (Scribner’s Magazine, 1932), “The Girl the Prince Liked” (College Humor, 1930), and “The Original Follies Girl” (College Humor, 1929); her play, Scandalabra (written 1932, produced 1933); and an article, “The Changing Beauty of Park Avenue” (Harper’s Bazaar, 1928). Tracy Royce embraces the strangeness of centos, erasures, and other forms of found poetry. You can read more of her found poetry in Bending Genres, dadakuku, Feral, Villain Era, and of course, The Ekphrastic Review. ** Accepting the Invitation Dear Zelda, I wonder if you remember that charcoal afternoon when soft rain beaded the Packard's windshield as we made our way on back country roads to the tea party where the Mad Hatter served orange marmalade jam on pumpernickel slices with peppermint tea poured from porcelain vessels embossed with portraits of Kings and Queens when the ticking cuckoo clock was as memorable as the lingering tone of a cathedral bell. Did you know that Scott had also been invited? Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019). His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US) Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Naugatuck River Review (US), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), the Madrigal (Ireland),The Wild Word (West Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (UK). He is a professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** Quixodyssey The landscape seemed to be sketched on a flat background—smudged, impermanent, unreliable. The more she examined it, the more her perception became muddled, the more she failed at focusing on anything at all. Light wheeled in a spiral, arriving from an invisible source that was down and up at the same time. It felt like being inside a runaway kaleidoscope, An intermittent glitter passed across her eyes, conjuring the complexity of contingency. Everything was broken and yet somehow appeared to be complete. She was supposed to return to the Other World, she knew that, but she could not turn away. She felt herself becoming part of the shifting scenery, ebbing and flowing into what was, for all practical purposes, no longer there. falderal deliriously insane Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Feral, Pure Haiku, Collaborature, The Chaos Section Poetry Project, and The Ekphrastic Review, and published in The Anthropocene Hymnal, and The Polaris Trilogy. Follow her explorations at https://kblog.blog/. ** Untitled Alice is smashed. The clams made her sick. The weeds made her high. The cat was purple. The tea wasn't tea. It was laudanum. And she's about to have a Jabberwocky explode from her belly. She wonders if she shrinks, that it might get smaller too. Though nothing is relative in this place. The Aces are painting the roses dead. The white rabbit represents all the men she'll ever know: running away from somewhere. Alice is seeing double, or is that Tweedledum or Tweedledee? The dog with brush for a tail keeps licking her. She thinks if it erases her legs and stomach, she won't have to deal with the behemoth. Alice hears moaning. Is it hers? She slowly unfurls from all of the sleeps, like the caterpillar's teasing smoke. Groggily, she awakens from slumber: the natural, the opioid, and alcohol induced, to find Lewis Carroll in her bed. Again. Bayveen O'Connell Bayveen O'Connell is an Irish writer of flash fiction, creative non-fiction, academic essays, and news articles. She takes inspiration from art, history, and myth. ** No Ordinary Milliner The invitation read Come to tea! Dress to please! Alice smiled as she remembered the handsome man wearing the black and red suit and top-hat. She sat on a bench under her favourite elm tree. He walked up to her and took her hand; Preciosa, he said, and kissed her hand Ven conmigo al país de las maravillas. He described a wonderland painted in vibrant colours, delicacies and teas served by rabbit butlers and skies that never darken with despair. Alice watched him saunter down the sidewalk; his red boots glinting in the waning sunlight. She held her invitation and followed him into the forest every now and then catching a glimpse of red behind the trees. She found the passage through the knot in the tree, followed it down to paradise. He was waiting for her on a picnic blanket. Bienvenida, Preciosa Alicia, he sang. She felt euphoric, she felt alive, she felt a little wild with glee. All afternoon at that mad, mad tea party they danced, they sang She was Alicia and would never be an ordinary milliner again. Laura Peña Laura Peña is an award winning poet born and raised in Houston, Tx. She holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Education. . She is a primary bilingual teacher as well as a translator of poetry into Spanish. Laura has been a featured poet at Valley International Poetry Festival, Inprint First Fridays, and Public Poetry. She has been a workshop presenter at VIPF in the Rio Grande Valley, Tx. and People's Literary Festival in Corpus Christi, Tx.. Laura writes ekphrastic poetry and has many pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review. She has also been published in Equinox, Boundless, Synkroniciti, Point Clear Press, Voices, and Four Tulips. ** Dear Zelda, We Accept Your Invitation You were much maligned for having a good time, for dancing, singing, painting despite the travels, the trials of life as the wife of a man struggling to write his way into history while you remained a mystery. Some say you were mad but you were glad to invite us to tea in the garden of your mind among castles in the sky, striding forward in red boots, lounging in pink slippers, posing in pomegranate pumps, welcoming us to your garden on a sunny summer afternoon. 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 ** Dear Zelda Did you, like Alice, yearn for swirls of colour rather than a drone of endless words? When the caterpillar quizzed, who are you, did you say with your bobbed head high—the original flapper or were your cells still buzzing from the shocks and drips, pretending to be two people shutting up the real you like a telescope with drink me bottles and eat me cakes. She is she, and I am I. The endless nights in the hospitals changing you into someone, Ada or Mabel or Dinah, enough left to construct one respectable person who ached to be a prima ballerina, playwright, author who rode on the hoods of taxi cabs who beat an opponent with a tennis racket who slept in a dog kennel who painted the pictures etched in your mind, with dreamy ruby and grassy watercolors, that were misunderstood and you spiraled in Central Park, digging a grave or a tunnel to Wonderland, unearthing solace. Did you, unlike Alice, resign to Cheshire-Cat’s declaration We are all mad here—I’m mad—You’re mad which was the same conclusion your doctors made when you collapsed on the kitchen floor entranced with sand, beaten from the hourglass so Time suspended as it did for the Mad Hatter. Do you know why a raven is like a writing desk? Were your glittering parties out of wine, crumbs in the butter abandoning one spot for the next in the midst of the night? You should have been able to recount your own adventure, what you remembered of the south, then New York, Paris but Alice wisely, naively announced that the past you was a different person there was no reviving. Towards the end, were you on trial with a jurors writing down stupid things on their slates for the world to judge? unimportant—important—unimportant—important the pencil squeaked—sentence then verdict off with your head—what a long sleep you’ve had. They found your slipper, charred black, still smoking. Such a curious dream. 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. ** Clipt Wild girl - Id sin in time: It zips, it zings, it wings - Wisps, shining in pink; Prism glitz - twilight blitz Hiding in crisp silks - bliss. Minx jilts, lilts, singing in Flight, risking jinx. Cliffside, firth swirls - Fizz in ink kiss twirls. Finch hiss: finis Binds girl. Robin White Robin is a lifelong creative: poet, writer, painter, collagist, and mixed media artist. She was born and raised in a small gown in Georgia, USA and can drive on a wet red clay road without going in the ditch. She loves music from gospel to hair metal. Going thrifting and antiquing followed by good food and good company is a perfect day. Her dream is to live on the beach at her favourite place in the world, Jekyll Island, GA. **
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