 The Adoration of the Magi, by Joseph Van Bredael (Flanders) before 1739 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 Adoration of the Magi, by Joseph van Bredael. Deadline is December 22, 2023. 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 ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. 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 VAN BREDAEL 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, December 22, 2023. 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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 Whirlpool, by Dusti Bongé (USA) 1956 Dear Writers, Thanks for all the fascinating submissions to the Bongé Challenge. These biweekly offerings are actually challenges on two fronts: first for the writers, second for the judges. Choosing from so many intriguing takes on this abstract piece was its own swirling whirlpool of words and images and reflections. I hope you enjoy reading these selections, and that, like me, you will appreciate the perspective that each writer brings to this work of art. With best wishes for your continued creativity, Sandi Stromberg ** Dusti Bongé Exhibit, Hollis Taggart Gallery, 2022 Bring Dusti back to New York, sunflowers in one hand, Biloxi oysters in the other. Yellow. Orange. Green. Blue. In the Ab Ex Boys Club of Gorky, De Kooning, Gottlieb, and Pollock, a woman wielded her own brush and palette knife, stretched her own canvas on beams of Southern pine. Scents of turpentine and linseed oil seeped into the waves of her long blonde hair. It was the 1950s. Paint exploded. Betty Parsons picked her up, begged her to stay. Canvas gessoed, scratched in purple, blooming red, floating angles, falling water. Back in Harrison County, rumors flew, all the details—real and imagined—whispered loudly at Christ Church the Redeemer Ladies Club Weekly Potluck Supper. The men of Biloxi watched her slim arms plant red lilies across a driveway, graft camellias, hide narcissus bulbs deep in the Mississippi soil. She stirred fiery pots of gumbo, lifted cast iron skillets of cornbread, wore white on the hottest days of August, sipped her Chardonnay with ice crystals. Today, back in Chelsea, a solo show. Opening night, a sea of pearls, silver trays, the flutes of Veuve Clicquot, deconstructed sushi, Sanskrit tattoos, and violet lipstick. Suede jackets, Armani pumps, triple-pierced ears, all the black-stockinged legs stand in awe. Manhattan bows. The artist smiles. From a grave in the South, she is still holding her own. Gabrielle Langley Gabrielle Langley is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Fairy Tale (Sable Books, 2023) and Azaleas on Fire (Sable Books, 2019). With work appearing in a variety of literary journals, she has been awarded the Lorene Pouncey Poetry Award and the Vivian Nellis Memorial Award for Creative Writing. She has been Houston Poetry Fest's Featured Poet, a national ARTlines finalist, and a recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations. Ms. Langley was also a spearhead and co-editor for the anthology Red Sky: Poetry on the global epidemic of violence against women (Sable Books, 2016). Additional information about this poet is available at http://www.gabriellelangley.com. ** Whirlpool America’s top diplomat says “far too many Palestinians have been killed.” 11/10/23 NYT In a cold and relentless prairie wind, here in November west of Chicago, the trees have lost track of their leaves, swirling down in ocher, red, and gold. But what’s it like to be a tree, losing its children, rooting deeply and dark, praying to withstand even further loss? Laurence Musgrove Laurence Musgrove is a professor of English at Angelo State University in Central West Texas where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing from a Buddhist perspective. He is the author of, three volumes of poetry: Local Bird (2015), The Bluebonnet Sutras (2019), and A Stranger’s Heart (2023) all from Lamar University Literary Press. ** A Little Man A little man, a vaguely yellowed apparition holding up the whole evolving universe of everything entangled in the garden, summer roses, fallen autumn leaves scattered, lonely, spindly trees stretching, longing, reaching up beyond the darkly narrowed confines clearly to the sun, a simple bird arched studiously aside, entangled in the fabulous invention of a little man, curiously portraying, purposely displaying the complicated contours of his own creation. Enrico Cumbo Enrico Cumbo was born in Sicily in the last century and emigrated to Canada when 9 years old. He is an historian (Ph.D, University of Toronto, 1996) and has just retired from teaching in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at a school in Toronto. He now has a great deal of time on his hands which he uses for ongoing research (in ethnic studies and historiography), rediscovering family, writing poetry, and generally contemplating the state of the world in this century, an increasing ordeal. ** There is Light A prodigy at eleven years of age, she wondered where all this would lead. She focused on experimenting with a stub of black eyeliner from her mother’s bathroom, deviously hid it inside a shiny red pencil box which sat on the top of an old cedar hewn dresser, within plain view. She horded hours, traced the maze of black stairs swirling ever upward, reaching for the plexiglass window at the very edge of the slanted attic roof where she yearned and struggled to set aside pre-teen angst and fly into the music like Poe’s black raven, feel the sheer joy of release from a dark, dank, blackened hole as it worried within her mind. A violin, her violin, handed down from virtuoso to virtuoso, inside a scarred, dilapidated case that touched, traveled to Bergen-Belsen and came out intact, had heard it all: the continual dirge of lost freedom, lost hope, despair as the bow cried for new life, new beginnings and somehow reunited with her family, her hands, her growing understanding of the pull, the call held within those two white nooses of trailing tomorrows. Jane Lang Jane Lang’s work has appeared in online publications including Quill and Parchment, the Avocet, Creative Inspirations, The Ekphrastic Review, and published in several anthologies. She has written and given two chap books to family and friends in lieu of Christmas cards. Jane lives in the Pacific Northwest. ** Charybdis I believed suffering real, if God existed or no god existed, this did, even if untouched by it, passing through other patient faces or the frozen grimace on some. Nothing had hurt me, nothing, not even nothing itself could harm. * Why do we look for pain in eyes, photos of eyes, open in death, weeping, or blank reflectors of sky passing, unburdened of any meanings? Why not use the lanky body, naked, as the news repeated, naked, moved face down on the cold floor. After the harm was done, nothing helped, nothing recycled the breath, not even the protocol of massage, rough on the dying skin, or to open those eyes where our eyes see only nothing, except ourselves staring back. * All night digits of twigs and rigid branches scratched the old wood of the window frames. The web they made contained nests of shadows where a few leaves left through the winter filled places where other leaf-shapes failed this year to come. Do trees feel like veterans who wake with nightly pain in phantom limbs, flexing a tight glove of hurting around a hand permanently gone, or a leg's weight pressing nothing where a foot once stepped, or once danced or stamped the earth? * I had alone escaped the seven blazes, the ancient curses we inherit. The file of razor teeth, the roar of blood on a predator's jaw -- these had never even nicked my skin. The lion was caught in a net lying among lambs, at peace, with their soft-leather tongues licking milk like its cubs. And the dark stone of cursing, falling on me, tumbling me down to hell where the seven judges silently wait, rose, instead, like a buoyant meteor. The black waters -- flooding the land, filling lungs -- that flung lifeless forms in whirlpools to the bottom retreated when they barely touched me. Nothing could ever hurt what is nothing. * And then there was you your damp hand on my neck as you kissed the top of my head "You are all right," you said "Everything will be alright," you repeated to me, over and over, in those few soul-murdering words. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes, poet and retired educator, studied and taught classical Greek and Roman texts for many years. He resides now in rural Ohio. ** Awakening Swirling dark chaos, enclosing in our minds, awakening truth. Clasping A darkening sight, swirling in states of abyss, clasping sanity. 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. ** To Dusti Bongé Regarding Whirlpool Where freedom and constraint collide my eye is drawn to depth inside the static swirl of gifted mind awash in wonder where I find that things perhaps still yearn to be what would have been where now I see that suction of impulsive brush has blurred creative plunging rush to sink tradition into trend where means themselves become the end though books — I swear — and manuscripts still waken wisdom, moving lips to signal, as they drift apart, preoccupation proving art. 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. ** Vortex There I was: resting but not enjoying it, as rest first requires work. Brown soggy, leafy weeds, fragile bleached reed tips hinted connection to submerged, drowned, obscured earth. My foot on the wet rock slipped, elbow off knee, chin off hand, body off smooth, tilted boulder. I made little splash for all my dread, sucked into murkiness in silence. Optimistic feet stretched down to greet the bottom; body followed in submission, anticipated the upward spring. The bottom wasn’t there. Hands and feet flailed in uncoordinated panic. Gravity was bested by centripetal force, current I’d overlooked from my listless perch. A gang of smarmy stalks, rangy and spastic, surrounded me; the more I fought, the more they wrapped slimy tendrils around limbs and trunk. I thrashed: a fish on a hook, twisted in twining weeds until I did not know up from down. I opened underwater eyes, glimpsed dim light. I retracted my extremities, wrapped arms around knees, tucked head. Vines lost their purchase. The torrent ejected me for being unwilling to spar. I bobbed to the surface, buoyant and still. Sheila Murphy Sheila Murphy writes poems to slow down. She is a spiritual director, cancer survivor, retreat leader and adventurer. She is a music director and pub fiddler. She has published poems in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction and The Ekphrastic Review. Sheila lives in coastal Maine, is married and has two adult offspring. She plays fiddle, guitar and piano. ** In The Beginning It was not only the swirling whirling of wind and water that began it all. Not only the sharp grey slabs thrown up and dashed around or rocks coated brown with mud. and slime No, beneath all of that was fire the burning heart that flamed towards the surface ready for that day when everything would be burned. 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/ ** Lucky Escape What started as a stiff breeze whipped up all of a sudden. We were walking under the canopy of the autumn trees, green, brown, red, orange leaves flying about us, eddies swirling, tumble twirling in a maelstrom, like a whirlpool, season's icy breath a cool reminder of unease as stormy rain began its spritzing. Shrugging farther into coats we hunkered, the path now rising with tree thickets bunkering as we neared the railway bridge, our footfalls on the natural ridge beside the valley with tracks below. Then we heard the rapid steps approaching, almost tip-tapping, clopping. It made us glance around, nearly stopping, expecting to find a stray dog, a hound of large size coming round that bend within the bridge's walls. To our surprise and also shock it wasn't a canine shape but a large buck, head low otherwise we'd have clocked the rack of antlers. Our eyes locked. The beast had a feverish look, the alarm within them not to be mistook, and it turned, leapt and then was gone. We checked the bridge - empty, none crossing there, but by the corner a gap large enough for a deer? Perhaps. We chose to turn around the way we'd come. Seconds later a large oak tree fell blocking the bridge where we'd have been walking. The leaves flew still and the storm raged on so we fought the storm's whirlpool lashes to get home. And in the calm and warm and dry we asked where the deer had come from and why. We asked ourselves did we believe it - was the magnificent creature really there? Did we really see it? And in the stillness away from the storm, we wondered if it was the forest's spirit charging us down? Was it just there to chase us off, to warn, raise the alarm? Whatever the creature was, real or make-believe, we were very grateful for our reprieve. Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in Visual Verse, Blue Heron Review and elsewhere online, and in print in Poetry Scotland and Sunday Mornings at the River's Poetry Diary 2024 anthology. She lives in the UK. ** A Song of Survival Entwined–the vermilion bud, the flower, petalled cream- blossom through hurricanes, chanting their anthem ‘Matter, We Matter.’ Two’s not just a number. Two’s all they need. Two’s a team. Entwined–the vermilion bud, the flower, petalled cream- whirlpool the icy winds. Pungent the thorns. ‘Touch winter’s beam,’ challenge the tangerine storms. The petals shoot, spark, spring, scatter their scent across squalls’ chatter. Entwined–the vermilion bud, the flower, petalled cream- blossom through hurricanes, chanting their anthem ‘Matter, We Matter.’ 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 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. ** Becoming Acquainted with Dusti As Thanksgiving approaches on the American side of the boundary and my country has become a whirlpool of dark foreboding, slashes of hatred, violence, vengeance and lies, with fire reds and oranges burning in the background, I become acquainted with the artist Dusti Bonge born in deep Mississippi at a time when dark foreboding whirlpools of hate and lies was like daily bread, common and ordinary, perhaps her painting 'Whirlpool' uses slashes of dark trees and twisting shapes pulling the viewer toward burning reds and oranges, as a warning, a way of saying "no", I can't write of her motives only that becoming acquainted with an unfamiliar artist such as Dusti and viewing her remarkable body of work as the seasons change to an unknown new year somehow makes life a little easier to accept and a grace of thanks is a little easier to recite. Daniel Brown Daniel Brown has recently published at age 72 his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musicianand Chronogram Magazine and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson 2023 gallery presentation Poets Respond to Art in Poughkeepsie, NY. ** Outlier In Whirlpool, by Dusti (Eunice) Bongé, the white’s so bright it shimmers on the edges like sunlight, and winds its way out of the black like water. The two big patches of colour eclipse the dull background They float atop stands, or stems like a showy pair of flowers in a wrought-iron enclosure. Clearly the white and red are too much, and need to be held in by those curved black bars. Welcome to the 1950s, heyday of abstraction! While some artists stuck to two dimensions and others smeared thick paint across the canvas Dusti valued depth and composition. Whirlpool is composed, planned, red and red, black and black, white and white balanced around a central point. Such a dance between freedom and restraint! Above the white paint pooled at the bottom the black forms a shape like ancient writing. Depth, control, gold triangles, black bars The red and white burn on, but nothing escapes the cage except the meandering line of light, or water, the bright white blob, like a tiny fish, and on the bottom right a little gold explosion. Karen Kebarle Karen Kebarle was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and now lives in Ottawa, Ontario. She holds an MA and PhD in English and has taught literature, writing, and English as a second language. One of her favourite jobs was her two years working as an art interpreter at the National Gallery of Canada, where she got to experience works by Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Marcelle Ferron, and other abstract painters. ** A Drift I have become an abstraction, more linear than fully formed. A mere echo of the body that once contained me. Disruptions leave me stranded in my mind. Full of sound, fragments of shadow-thought. Words fail to cohere. The shift is subtle, deft, and nearly complete 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/. ** Walking into a Burning Forest Once I whirled in light roped for cedar scent. The space between branches splotched softly as white ash. The last occurrence was thirty-eight years ago. I lost the pathway of ferns singed when my lover died. The smell is now ripe orange clove. My knees are missing. I want creamed apricot antenna that touch. Oh, for joints to knot. If I could own quartz and tiger’s eye. John Milkereit John Milkereit resides in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including The Comstock Review and The Ekphrastic Review. His fourth collection of poems, Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover, is forthcoming soon from Kelsay Books. ** Maelstrom school confuses him especially words all squiggly print and swirls his belly awash with the swash and churn of learning he thinks of the spin cycle of his mother’s machine or the whirlpool he saw on YouTube undercurrents dragging him down in the turmoil of tides back home his grandmother sits in the recliner stirring tepid tea watching small bubbles like the froth that fills her head her words are long gone rusted in the grind of age but she silently strokes his hand the circular motion surprisingly soothing 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 pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published in the next month. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Whirlpool Ode Wonder of a draining tub, How we played together, Me, plunging my fingers into you, You, dis- and re-appearing like A magician’s trick. How I have stirred You into tea/coffee/soup/juice/milk Anything that mixes–you, the blender’s Secret, sucking every ingredient towards Oblivion, the center mess of spinning blades. How I imagined you in video games: Transport to another world, the opening Mouth of an impossible monster, Entrance to the ship graveyard, An endgame spell to seek out. How you have come around and Around in every stage of life: You, clockwise/counterclockwise myth Of the hemispheres’ flushing toilets. You, vortex of Pirates and Little Mermaids, You, Yates’s Widening Gyre, You, symbol Of the spiral curriculum, You, coming back ‘Round again, You, sweeping lines on Bonge’s Canvas, the top of you, an open eye, the Bottom of you pointed in like the legs Of a tomato cage, a black wire Funnel sifting beige, bending More like a wooded path Than an endpoint. Inverted swirling water cone, I am caught in your drift, and have been For years, a penny circling the rim of The donation jar, ever-descending in In tighter arcs awaiting that final, Inevitable Drop. Ian Evans Ian Evans is a writer and teacher with a B.A. in English and an Ed.M. in Secondary English Education and the 2023 recipient of Somerset County Teacher of the Year. He has previously co-created “The Mechanic,” a graphic poem, and his words have appeared on Thanatos Review and The Ekphrastic Review. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey, with his wife, who is also a writer and teacher. ** Skylight that let the moon slide by the walls long rusted-- the night of white shadows moon spread over you. That night of fragrance and the earthen lamp when the incense burned-- the flame crawled into cracked corners and peace rested on your face. I kept the flame ablaze, watched the ashes drop. In silence, by the writing desk until the light broke the night-- the night of fragrance and the flame. Each day the birdsong fills the air, by now I set the stalks of tuberoses. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Dream Whispers Haunted by rural landscapes clad in frozen pellets from last night’s storm, I am touched by shadows of shag hickory, sassafras, and choke cherry boughs as I search for the trail’s opening-- beyond the underbrush, a fog-laden field is faintly outlined by silent silhouettes of towering hundred foot white pine. Maybe I’m still daydreaming about our time together under cranberry sunsets. Dr. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Nameless Roads (2019) and Driving Long Distance (forthcoming 2024). 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), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** Watery Grave When Charybdis swirled Ulysses into her vortex Scylla laughed her heads off When his ship of fools sailed into allegory between the devil and the deep blue sea The heinous ones chose the lesser of two evils And thrust Homer onto the horns of his own dilemma Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith so appreciates what she learns from exploring ekphrastic challenges. For example, she was woefully clueless about Homer’s work spawning so many allegories. ** Iron Corsets Corps de Fer, 1739: " A bodice with small iron plates for badly grown girls." French-German Dictionary "By 1944, Kahlo's doctor had recommended a steel metal corset instead of plaster." Frida Kahlo, Wiki Biography " Once there was a machine for breathing. It would embrace the body and make a kind of love. And when it was finished, it would rise like nothing at all above the earth." "The Iron Lung" Stanley Plumly The colours of the Fall evening were somber. The brightly coloured leaves -- the deciduous ones -- had been lost in a heavy rainfall. Storm faded for the promise of the first snow; the wind whispered a silent prayer for the left-over leaves, now like left-over fabric -- the remnants of fashion in burnt sienna and yellow ochre with flashes of white and red (blood and moon) a memory of work stored in a funnel-shaped, black wrought iron container its bars like a jail, or a door closed in a dungeon beneath the court of Catherine d'Medici a Queen in a gown of odd olive gold like fabric that showed through the slated sides of a black iron cage in the deserted costume room. It had been suggested (and later disproved) that Catherine was the first to wear a metal corset, her body like a rigid hour glass; and it's hard to imagine, in the 21st century, an armourer (or blacksmith) bending over corsets hammer held to shape "lingerie" heated by fire, not love. Cate paused to read information on a playbill, an historic adaptation of the Medicis' belief in prophecies; in the predictions of Nostradamus a political figure in Catherine's Court where armor and fashion were closely entwined. In medieval French, the word corset referred to doublets and gowns and body armor. Reading the playbill, Cate thought of Jean d'Arc wearing a breastplate her spiritual strength a vision as the morning light made the shining metal a mirror of the Crusades, Knights and the vagaries of life and death: When Men's & Women's bodies are crook'd and deformed medieval definition goes on to say, they wear iron bodies and will endure anything to make them straight again (Sermon, 1632, clergical author unknown.) On a stage in the Great Hall of the church, Cate had played Frida Kahlo wearing a white peasant blouse and the blood-red patterned skirt of a gypsy part of the material pieces left behind by a costume seamstress like hope for a miracle, Kahlo living after her body was impaled by a streetcar railing in Mexico City. For months she lay in a hospital her time occupied by painting flowers on the heavy plaster body cast that held her, broken and immobile until the plaster was exchanged for a metal cage to protect the pieces of her broken spine. Dark-haired Cate -- eyebrows reaching up like blackbird wings -- had been, she supposed, a "star" playing Frida, teardrops falling as they had in Kahlo's self-portrait, Broken Column, her performance motivated by tragedy -- the prediction that Kahlo's injuries were so great she would die..... But she survived, and the director had added a songbird in a cage -- an ethereal double -- a way for Kahlo to move upward -- to fly -- her imagination guided by life-giving dreams of an alternate world; one like her cousin had dreamed, a reality outside her body, trapped in an iron lung before Jonas Salk discovered a polio vaccine. Preparing for her role, Cate thought of the centuries of pain -- like a vortex individually illustrated with tattered images of history -- time spiraling downward to a single, simple everyday moment when she stirred her cafe latte, flecks of foam swirling in a caffeinated cosmos; or pages in a playbook caught in a maelstrom of words -- a dialogue of life and death -- a whirlpool; or an artist revealing the spirit fruits of heaven as Diego Rivera painted watermelons. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp writes of Frida Kahlo, a free spirit threatened by serious injury. Dusti Bonge is considered the first Abstract Expressionist in Mississippi. Kahlo appears in Iron Corsets, a poem suggested by Bonge's Whirlpool, because of the seeming rigidity of the black bars restraining the movement of the painting's colour swatches. Linked to crossing time as was Newendorp's poetry thesis, Crossing Time Lines: The Grandfather Journey (1992), Iron Corsets travels from the 16th century Medicis to Kahlo's crippling injury; and to Stanley Plumly's beautiful poem, "The Iron Lung," his impression of what the mind can create when the diseased body is immobile. Laurie Newendorp's book, When Dreams Were Poems, attempts to weave poetry and art with nature and life. Honoured many times by The Ekphrastic Review challenges, she lives in Houston, her writing enriched by ekphrastics as she works on her next book of poems.  Flying Machines (double sided artwork), by Charles A.A. Dellschau (USA) c. 1920 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 Flying Machines, by Charles A.A. Dellschau. Deadline is Dec. 8, 2023. 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 ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. 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 DELLSCHAU 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, December 8, 2023. 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.  Hamlet Shakespeariana, Serie Heroinas Literarias, by Fernando Vicente (Spain) 2022. Used with artist permission. Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, Thank you so much for submitting your Hamlet Shakespeariana pieces to The Ekphrastic Review. I am ever so content that you have responded to this prompt with such enthusiasm, wit and craftsmanship…it was really a delight to read your words! Thank you!! This amazing challenge has prompted a heroic compilation indeed, I hope you will enjoy reading it. Congratulations to everyone, hurrah for TER and The Amazing Lorette, and… Fare ye well! Kate Copeland ** Alas I may have known him well but he did not know me He thought so, but as I hold his head in hand, I see him crowned of nothing but laughter, yes, provided that but none else and looking on his demise, it’s clear that our fate of life and love does not imply understanding, nay truth spoken in fact knows only death Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson writes Ekphrastic as well as other forms of poetry often, from prompts, memories and nature. She advocates for feral cats and captive elephants, spends time with her young grandson crafting in play doh, and reads voraciously.Her work is seen in over 70 publications, including Blue Heron Review, Lothlorien and The Ekphrastic Review. Her full length works are available on Amazon. ** Ophelia’s Dream The sky was blue, balcony strangely light, Quite different from bleak Elsinore. For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings. A dagger by my side, I wore Lord Hamlet’s shirt, his promissory ring. My crown I am but still my griefs are mine. The skull I balanced, fingers outstretched, fine, Bore a strange antique script. I looked instead, Impassive, undisturbed, without a frown, At kingship’s symbol on the dead man’s head. Uneasy is the head that wears a crown. I am alarmed this dream bodes ill for all. Lightness, attire, skull, calm - fears won’t cease. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. I dread the outcome this vision portends: Some evil act will lead to cruel revenge, To bloodshed, madness. What it means for me I cannot understand but sure I am ‘tis not Divinity will shape our ends. Carolyn Thomas Carolyn Thomas is from the Neath Valley in South Wales, UK. After a career of teaching in Further, Higher and Adult Education, she is now enjoying the freedom to write. She has published poetry in Impossible Archetype, The Ekphrastic Review (Luna Challenge), A Pride of Lines (Coin Operated Press), the UK Places of Poetry project and collections published by Sunderland University's Spectral Visions Press.She has reviewed for Stand magazine and her account of life as a gay a woman in the 1970s is published in the Honno Press Collection, Painting the Beauty Queens Orange. She now lives in Tyneside with a misanthropic cat and sports a dragon tattoo. ** Alas for Laughs A lass for Yorick—would she show and tell, orating of the finite jests she bore upon her back; the way his fancy’d swell a thousand times, yet which she would abhor? His loose-hung lips no orgy would arise; she’d mock the grin she’d never dare to kiss yet gamboled him with gibes of laughed surprise, her gorge restricting entrance to his miss. Chop-fallen, then, her chamber locked up tight, no ride upon her back—nor she on him. Imagination put off one more night, the paint they both wear fades upon life’s whim. The lass’s time would also come, they tell, but long before, it seems she slew him well. Ken Gosse Ken Gosse prefers writing metric, rhymed verse, usually humorous, often with traditional forms. He was first published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, and since then in online and print anthologies by Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Pure Slush, The Ekphrastic Review, Home Planet News Online, Spillwords, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife live in Mesa, AZ, usually with rescue dogs and cats underfoot. ** Ophelia Unveils it All -- an alternate reading Gothick script that inks your skull gives dreamlike memories to mull. Did I kiss your fleshy lip and ride your playful, bouncing hip, as stoic nobles forced a smile, while fancy masks disguised their guile? I quickly learned their courtly art -- how shards of ice had filled each heart. Within these walls of Elsinore, they curtsied -- rotten to the core. A schoolboy, late from Wittenberg -- a place that stumps each dramaturg -- proclaimed: To be or not to be, but showed no interest in me. He seemed so jealous of his mother and how she bed his father's brother. Hamlet's lover, Laertes (flirty, yet who feared disease), used Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as playthings when they took their turn, and made the English execute them, lest their gossip bear some fruit. And then they tried to tell the town that, heartsick, fate led me to drown. But I survived this clueless lot. Alas, that Avon scribbler's plot now starred a melancholy prince, whose monologues should make one wince. He told me: Seek a nunnery where wanton girls greet lechery. But see today: Ophelia rises! And women claim their rightful prizes. Male egos pose as history, but women wove the tapestry. So Yorick, here beside your grave we see that Death makes kings its slave. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who lives in the farmland of Ohio. His poems and humorous works have appeared in: Snakeskin Poetry, Lighten-Up, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, and elsewhere. ** Note to Fernando Vicente What would they make of your Hamlet? My students of the millennium, age 17, sitting in college-prep English. Most tried to get Shakespeare’s English, but as one girl said, “Spanish is easier”. The only foreign language offered. I referenced the King James Bible, but even then in rural Bible-belt Missouri church and Bible reading was falling away. I supplemented with the decade-old movie, macho Mel Gibson as Hamlet drowning the “This is so gay” back-row chorus. Still every red-neck male sneered when I emphasized the poetry of lines, the sensitivities of Hamlet’s deliberations. They struggled over words and struggle still over their own children’s choices. The tattooed neck, the ruffled collar, The high cheek bones under a blush, the manicured nails. Their nails wore lines of grease or were chewed to the quick. Fernando Vicente, you’ve captured well that duality I saw in Hamlet, but dared not dwell on. Did I betray that student who came out in college and the boy who later became a senator passing laws against gender transitioning? Did I betray the girl who as a doctor had her clinic shut down? Was I too cowardly to act? Yorick’s skull made the play for them. Girls screamed “Yuck.” Boys cheered. Thank you for crowning it. Victoria Garton Victoria Garton’s books are Venice Comes Clean (Flying Ketchup Press, 2023), Pout of Tangerine Tango (Finishing Line Press, 2022), and Kisses in the Raw Night (BkMk Press,1989.) The anthology, From K.C., MO to East St. Lou, (Spartan Press, 2022) featured ten of her poems. Recent acceptances are from Cosmic Daffodil, I-70 Review, Proud to Be, Sparks of Calliope, WayWords Literary Journal, The Penwood Review, The Seraphic Review, Thorny Locust, and Vital Minutiae. ** Something is Rotten in the State What use is a golden crown atop a skull? O, why do we seek power at any cost, so that our dominions grow, enemies perish? This lust for control, power, revenge - is it too predictable, driven by our long histories, too easy to fall into the old destructive ways, solid in our faith that we, and only we, are right? Flesh and bone, tooth and claw, an eye for an eye. Would we have it any other way? And victory? Foes melt away, destroyed. Bones ground to dust. No thaw in our icy will, we must stay strong of purpose and not be fooled by appearances. The enemy's resolve never wavers in their desire to hurt and kill, itself enough to warrant their demise, all of them, sent into oblivion. We'll stay strong, ignore the laments, wails. A bloodied toll paid by all, the red mist settling like dew. Emily Tee [Note: A Golden Shovel poem using the quotation from Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 2: ”O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!”] Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review, Visual Verse, Blue Heron Review and elsewhere online, and in print with Poetry Scotland. Emily is the editor of the new monthly Ekphrastic Challenge Contest by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. She lives in the UK. ** Aspect Absent His crown kind of matches my hair, but I wonder where the bottom of his face is. Not the fleshy meaty bits, I get what happened to them, but the hard bony part. There was a lower jaw once, and teeth, an arc of them. I don’t like the way his uppers rest on my palm. It’s undignified for him, and he wouldn’t approve. I go along with that. If it were here, the lower jaw, would the mouth be opened or closed? When a skull sits with the mouth closed, complete and on top of a whole skeleton, the grin can look scary and grim. Let the same skull display with the lower jaw hanging and the mouth wide open, it’s a happy aspect, silly and shouting Howdy at anyone looking in. This is likely a mouth closed skull if we can ever find the rest of his face. A word like Alas doesn’t match up with Howdy very well. Poor feller. Carl Damhesel Carl Damhesel lives in Tucson, Arizona. He is a member of Old Pueblo Playwrights and his plays have been presented as in their annual New Play Festivals, and also in the Tucson Community Players' One Act Play Festival. He has had poems and short works published in The Ekphrastic Review and in joyful! magazine. ** Breeches Buoy Translate the complement, to be in roundel gloss, fine fingers, frills, bone china, zygomatic arch, inked neck sans Adam’s apple lump. Scene balcony, scape, nimbus cloud, but jut of jaw, rouge, ginger flow cannot distract from focus, skull, or is it crown draws, overcomes? To fore lies gothic Yorick script - not centred so we see entire - alas, our lass must nail the weight of cranial, so teeth on edge. The canon roars - survey the field - with tragicomic histories, in human makeup lie the flaws, those doors through which the mighty fall. In genderbending stagecraft art, bright entry from the upper left, from groundlings’ yard to heaven’s roof, in tiring house, the globe, the world. This player, smokescreen, Hamlet seen, an acting man, proscenium, but what has been for what to be, war theatre, stage exeunt. 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 by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Yorick Hello poor Yorick At last we meet, for the first time alas. You still have your crown worn often in irony. What a joke that was when you pranced around in jest to entertain the one whose head wore a different crown. Both gone now. Long gone. Which king was he? Alas no one remembers. It’s you Yorick who’ll be remembered. Your name is writ large and, at last, inked on your boney forehead. So it’s you who’ll last forever, at last. 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/ ** Talisman: tattooed, lucky charm, bone on bone, a string of light, the half of me who knew the ownership of words and immortality long before I could walk or talk. My powers paled. The death of my womb and soul mate left me with no authority, no looking backward nor forward. Shared bone structure did nothing but remind me I was still alive; lean and mean, most suggested. It’s impossible to look into the eyes of what once was. A twin no longer: Me in my tower, forgetting there was horizon or river or the Most High. And though, long ago, I’d arrived minutes earlier, I’d long prayed to be the first to leave. Patty Joslyn Patty Joslyn lives in Vermont. She’s fascinated with death and birth as passages into new realms. She has been published in El Calendario de Todos Santos, poetsonline.org, VOYA (Voices of Youth Advocates), Tupelo Press-30/30 Project-March 2015, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and several anthologies. Patty’s book ru mi nate was born in 2017. Patty has never fully recovered from empty nest syndrome or the fact she can no longer do a cartwheel. www.22pearls.blogspot.com & www.22pearls.org ** Can You Ever Really Know Someone? You took me to your favourite play and when I asked why Hamlet? You said because Ophelia kills herself for the love of a broken man We swapped stories of death Your father—my best friend And I thought those blue bands Would bind our claws forever We walked through our backstories Your mother’s strange remarriage My home with the blue mountain view Stumbling over all the things that might have been We must have laughed sometimes But I know the very bones of us Were laid in loss and longings And always in the wings your hungry ghosts We must have kissed a thousand times Yet I never saw the vicious thorns Trapped beneath your turned up collar Or the dagger neatly hidden behind your back All these years later I visit your grave To try and put to rest the tragedy of us A kindly gravedigger asks me if I’m okay I nod and say ‘”You see I knew him once.” Adele Evershed Adele Evershed was born in Wales. Her prose and poetry have been widely published. She has been nominated for the Best of the Net for poetry and the Pushcart Prize for poetry and short fiction. Finishing Line Press published Adele’s first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places, in July. Her novella-in-flash, Wannabe, was published by Alien Buddha Press in May. Her second poetry collection, The Brink of Silence, is available from Bottlecap Press ** To Fernando Vicente Regarding Hamlet Shakespeariana Here face to face with cusp of fate young Hamlet well you illustrate as princely heir to sexton's wit that hallows truth of hollowed pit where layers of remains abound beneath the sacred abbey ground, forever rotting in their place to make, for yet another, space where flesh to water giving way is soon the dust again of clay but bone will longer stay intact to hone for death its artifact like skull of fool beloved in hand as weapon Hamlet could command in "madness" feigned to ably joust with comic spirit he would roust. "So even here you entertain... ...where heart I've loved will soon be lain no longer fearing whether sane or victim of the inhumane "whose lust for power blood has wrought in veins of those who never fought descended as competing heirs to realm embattled seized as theirs "from others who had claimed it too so long as strength let them subdue the conquered who became possessed, and yet obliged to feel as blessed, "by those so noble who so vain would murder kin with sheer disdain convinced that reign indemnifies, by crown that church solemnifies, "whatever evil must be done to see that faith in power's won despite no basis where decay will mark damnation's final say. "Oh, Yorick, still you are the balm that humours dank and dreaded calm." 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. ** Questions Before Students Read Hamlet l. Has a death ever made you feel like that person or animal remained close by for several days? If yes, did you share this with anyone else? 2. Has a dream inspired you to do something unexpected? 3. Have you ever watched a TV show or movie that resonated with what your life is like? 4. Do you know a young man who seems confused? Or worried? A young woman who is in love but sad? 5. Do you know an old person who gives unhelpful advice? 6. Have you done something you didn’t want to do even though it seems like the right thing? 7. Has one of your parents ever disappointed you? 8. Do you have a brother or sister who would protect you when you are in danger? 9. Have you ever found yourself talking to a dead person? Or to the skull of dead person? 10. Do you ever feel the world would be a better place if you did exactly what you feel called to do? 11. Is the world you know at war? Have you experienced chaos? If you are able to answer yes to more than two of these questions, you will understand the play. If more than two, start talking to a friend. Tricia Knoll Tricia Knoll is an aging Vermont poet who taught high school English – including Hamlet–for ten years. Her work appears widely in journals, anthologies, and seven collections. Her newest chapbook The Unknown Daughter is on pre-sale from Finishing Line Press through January 5, 2024 for a March 1 publication. Website: triciaknoll.com ** Sacred Crown Luminous red head, exquisite in ruffled white, holding sacred crown. 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. ** memento mori yorick you ol' fool forget me knot tis in the memory of it wherefore art the key of it your ghost runs clear my chthonic friend of every lasting suffering for my second coming hamlet dear a daisy chain wouldst keep me afloat Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith resides in Montreal with Sir Henry, a Norwegian Forest feline of some personality & weight. ** The Ghost Inside a Dream Serie Heroines Literarias, "Hamlet Shakespeariana," Fernando Vincente (Spain) 2022 "Sometimes in the night I feel it Near as my next breath, and yet untouchable. Silently the past comes stealing..." “Ghosts,” Dan Fogelberg (lyrics) "Ah! Mounte sou le bel Troubaire Mestre d'amour!" (Where is he, the handsome Troubadour? past master of love?) Strange Images of Death, Barbara Cleverly "Send her outside when the room rises..." film, Woman Walks Ahead "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him...a fellow of infinite jest, most excellent fancy." Hamlet, William Shakespeare You said my red hair was a talisman of the Sun; and of the earth -- the copper mined in Falun -- where, beneath our reality (the awfulness of death lay precisely in the absence of consciousness)* someone had scrawled a picture of a Tree, a pine in the shape of Christmas decorated with glyphic initials, tattooed by winter spirits when ice on the canals were frozen in Sweden and Denmark, a dream in cold and midnight blue. The world seemed perfect when we married -- I wore the rings of Saturn, platinum as the moon. Ophelia drowned in the bathtub of a Pre-Raphaelite artist, her red hair waved with roses in the water, and I came to life on a Spanish canvas. We never spoke of my past love, Yorick, the symbols on my arms made with a dove's beak. And Pierrot's beautiful Columbine (he was her funny clown) had a name that meant she was his little dove. I wore a blouse in pearl-white satin, an attempt at purity because my ancestress said red hair meant I was a witch; she prayed to save me from a proclivity for sexual suggestion. Your lips, soft as the touch of a paint brush. You did not know, when you were consumed by your work and did not come to bed I consulted Yorick, whose sweet skull gave me thoughts, swirling like snow flakes; how we'd shared the message in a crystal ball, the past and future like the moment when you felt the emptiness of space where once my warmth had filled your arms. I laugh out loud sometimes, a victim of your timeless charms. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp's love of literature led to a semester with Shakespeare's language and his unforgettable characters Shakespeare is timeless and so Fernando Vincente is influenced by his work in the 21st century in his series Heroines Literarias. Some of the canvases are more visceral, as Lady Macbeth, her clasped hands covered with blood; but in Hamlet Shakespeariana, there is an intimation of purity, Ophelia in white, drowned as a virgin in a royal suicide. Vincente "modernizes" his Shakespeariana by giving Ophelia (and Yorick's skull) tattoos, her copper-red hair flaming above flowers tattooed on her throat as if Shakespeare is both her voice and Vincente's art. Laurie Newendorp's book, When Dreams Were Poems, focuses on the relationships between poetry, life and art. She has been honoured many times in the ekphrastic challenge and continues to embrace art as a muse. ** Cordelia’s Recollections I knew someone with the same name, I said as the museum attendant handed me the skull from the Elizabethan display. I recalled Yorick as an elderly cashier at Burger King where my mother and I went for lunch once a week when I was in preschool. On every visit he would place a colourful paper crown on my head before I left the front counter. Staring at the skull, I paused and wondered years later what happened to him. I hoped he hadn’t spent his entire life preparing flame-grilled Whoppers. He told me many times I was cute. If he could only see the mature version of that little redhead now-- a pale face powdered with makeup, white ruffled blouse accented by a bead necklace, the black and white tattoo on my neck, haunting blue eyes staring into sunken sockets wondering if he would even remember that four-year old as I stand near a museum window totally oblivious to gathering cloud formations hovering over distant hills. Dr. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Nameless Roads (2019) and Driving Long Distance (forthcoming 2024). His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), CrosswaysLiterary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland)and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom).He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** To Be, or Not to Be I turn the crumbled earth, seeking reminders of permanence: a golden crown, skull marked in ink, delicately held remains of the dead. I watch as daybreak announces fate's farflung cry, circuitous and transient. Elanur Eroglu Williams Elanur Eroglu Williams teaches reading and writing at an Adult Learning Center in the Bronx. In addition to her work as a GED Teacher, she is a writing tutor for elementary school students. She lives and writes in New York City with her husband and her dog, Luna. ** Shakespeariana Stay here, stay close, but pray stay you away from those who would remove you from my sight-- speak softly to me, lest your speech betray the anguish that is burning through my heart. If you don’t love me, don’t tell me—tell me a story instead—help me to hold on to life—tell me secrets in poetry-- hide your apathy, seduce me with song. Once we have threaded the needle, what then? entanglements are inevitable-- deceptions, distrust, interrogation-- each subplot possible, impossible. It matters not who committed the crime-- We stand here ensembled—cast out of time. 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/. ** Listen Well, Listen All, of My Tale to Caution All You see her from afar: sun glinting in her auburn hair, fair skin glowing in the light, the red of her lips and the blush on her cheeks. She looks feminine except for the slanted, curved sheath and handle of a sword secure at her hip, and a dagger hidden within the folds of her white linen shirt. She has your heart as soon as her cerulean blue eyes Turn to stare at you. Within days, you’re married, no doubt in your mind. You don’t know each other, but you make the time to learn about the other. You find common interests, and you learn things that were hidden. She finds herself with you by her side, where she no longer has to be someone that she despises. She wears breeches, tunics, her hair short as her golden jewelry glints on her fingers and ears with an added pearl necklace the only thing that declares: “I’m a woman and the Queen, don't mess with me.” You rule the kingdom in fairness and love. Not a soul complains of a starving home, or a suffering family for all are cared for, and are known, to the rulers of their land. Your people are happy, celebrating life and liberty. But then one day it all changes. It all falls apart from one ill-timed mistake. Visitors come and look upon this lovely land in wonder. One particular set of eyes catches your attention, and just like that, it is all over. Your Queen looked at you with love. She gave her all to you, body, mind, and soul. But when you cheated, she took inspiration: “Off with your head, Crown and all!” You’re no longer King of York, but a Dork jester: forever forgotten from the kingdom you reigned over together. Katie Davey Katie Davey is an aspiring author from the rural parts of House Springs, MO. Her first published piece was for The Ekphrasitc Review’s Richard Challenge, titled Hidden Prophecies. She has worked on Harbinger Magazine as a staff intern and is a member of Stephens College’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. She will earn her BFA in Creative Writing, with minors in Equestrian Studies and Psychology, at Stephens College in May 2024. ** Lady Hamlet Framed in a Renaissance style vignette, Like Mary and Gabriel, an Ionic column to the left, A brilliant blue sky with cumulous clouds in the center, And the ever-present mysterious city on a hill To the right, we find our modern lady And the person who commands her attention. She has done so much to decorate herself-- The hair dyed red, eyebrows plucked, Blush, carefully brushed up her cheekbone. We only see half of her in this silhouette, But two rings circle her wedding finger, Her nails are long and manicured, Her left ear pierced with another ring, And the right ear also, probably. On the side of her long neck, a large tattoo Of two familiar bunches of flowers Takes up all the space. She is bony and thin, anorexic perhaps, Her hair, tucked down the back of her ruffled White blouse, and of course the hilt of a sword At her side and a skull in her hand. After all, she is Hamlet, with her puffy sleeves Tied at the wrist in bows. And on the skull, with a gold crown, somehow still attached, Or perhaps posthumously added, are the letters “Yor,” for Yorick, in case we hadn’t noticed, Since the artist only shows us half of her, And half of poor dear Yorick’s dead head. Underneath this painterly facade, Is she more interesting than Shakespeare’s anxious prince? Does she share his regret, his seething anger, his hopeless despair? Can she speak his wistful words? Maybe we need to listen, watch and Even read the play. Rose Anna Higashi Rose Anna Higashi is a retired professor of British Literature, Shakespeare, Japanese Literature and Poetry. Recently her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poets Online, The Avocet, The Agape Review, Americamedia.org, and Integrated Catholic Life. With her niece, Kathleen Pedulla, she is the co-author of thewebsite myteaplanner.com, which also publishes her monthly blog, Tea and Travels. Many of her haiku and lyric poems appear in these publications. Rose Anna lives in Honolulu with her husband of sixty years, Wayne Higashi. ** Infinite Jest I could tell by her face she was a thinker, the type who sees beneath the layers, my skin, my skull on show, my own teeth grinning at my patent status as a fool. I knew I'd remember her, even after death: her shining copper hair, gorgeous as autumn, her ice blue eyes eager as a Danish winter. She’d laugh at my jokes, and I'm proud of that - men are made immortal by less. She was buoyed by my smile, and I cherish that too. The best I can hope is that she'll think of me, perhaps in a dream: my face in her hands contemplating eyes that always saw the funny side, and remember the wisdom only foolery can teach. Paul McDonald Paul McDonald taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, before taking early retirement in 2019. He is the author of 20 books to date, which includes fiction, poetry and scholarship. His most recent poetry collection is 60 Poems (Greenwich Exchange Press, 2023). Paul McDonald Amazon Author Page ** If I could speak to you again, I would hold your royal head before me and tell you this If I had known you would arrive, back then, when I was withering away, shriveling from neglect and despair—if I had known, would I still have stood in line at McDonald’s, listening to the Beatles sing “Will you still love me when I’m 64?” Would I have turned to my husband, who had one foot out the door, with that question lingering in my ear and his eyes answering, “No”? If I had known it was you in that dream, jumping up and down on the bed like a five-year-old. You who would quote Shakespeare and walk me back into possibility. If I had known in that fast-food joint that I was near where the double-decker of happiness was about to pass, I would have let go of that man who looked at me with dead- fish eyes. I would have run sooner toward that magic bus stop singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg’s full-length collection Frogs Don't Sing Red (Kelsay Books, April 2023) includes several works nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review, edited Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press, 2015) and co-edited Echoes of the Cordillera (Museum of the Big Bend, 2018), an anthology of ekphrastic poems in conversation with the photography of Jim Bones. Her poems have appeared recently in Panoply (new Pushcart Prize nominee), San Pedro River Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and MockingHeart Review. Translations of her poetry into Dutch can be found at Brabant Cultureel and on the website of Dutch poet, Albert Hagenaars. ** Not to Be Wrong time, wrong place, wrong man. Power is the clash of swords Dawn attacks over the ice Nights on the bare mountain Carousing of wine, bawdy laughter Using, abusing of women World of physical challenge Thoughts, ideas, philosophies Doors to the female psyche Death a feasible proposition that lies beyond the battle? No decisions can be made Before they are outdated Out of joint, at war with his moment Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher from near Cambridge, UK who has also taught in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in many magazines/anthologies from over 12 countries, including: US, UK, Australia, Canada, India, Germany, Croatia and Romania. ** I Can’t Feel My Face When I’m With You* because the map of your skin unfolds and resists refolding because the map of your skin strikes matches against my decorated skull because the map of your skin is visible only in certain light (candle) because the map of your skin is outlined in black ink, still decipherable under water because the map of your skin is smooth to the touch, tip, tongue, this loose goose chase you lead me on because the map of your skin sends me sureño again and again in search of stolen minutes, miles, smiles I would voluntarily drown in if drowning is the punishment for such witchery, I’ll take it because look, my love, how perfectly we fit together Crystal Karlberg *Title from Can’t Feel My Face, written by Max Martin, Peter Svensson, Ali Payami, Savan Kotecha and the Weeknd Crystal Karlberg is a Library Assistant at her local public library and a speaker for Greater Boston PFLAG. ** Comeuppance If his arrogance wasn’t so off-putting, if she hadn’t resented him for the years of denigration, wordlessly bottling up negative emotions emerging in their marriage, unsure if Indifference would have saved them; hadn’t he made her feel like a shattered porcelain doll with every snide remark delivered in a condescending voice, putting up with his belittlement for as long as she could remember; hadn’t she lost the gist for her artistic expression after his narcissistic Self hijacked her grand opening last month, knowing full well how much it meant to her career, peer recognition, blaming it all on her insecure nature once confronted; ohh… and that sarcastic look in his eyes melting her into a puddle of self-doubts, shattering her spirits to smithereens because that was his power over her; she wouldn’t have allowed herself to lose control under the thousands of shimmering lights in the gloaming of her bare spring garden as the skies wept for her, but what’s done is erstwhile and silencing him was the only way to tip the balance of power. A glance through the bedroom window at the exploding beds of asphodel and white lilies, a tiny sting of remorse vanishing at the speed of light, the memory of last spring expunged with the pure willpower of constraint before it took root. Andrea Damic Andrea Damic, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She’s an amateur photographer and author of prose and poetry. She thinks there is something cathartic about seeing your words and art out in the world. Her literary art appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Sky Island Journal, The Dribble Drabble Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She spends many an hour fiddling around with her website https://damicandrea.wordpress.com/. ** With Sappho's Blessing I had her paint on your skull like she would with a needle. Bearing your last name - which should’ve been mine. You’re my one thing from home he said I could bring. There is nowhere I’d go where you would not come. This crown on my head should be on yours. We could be the first. Queens together. No king. But I’m sorry, so sorry, this must be my fault. If I could’ve been normal - we would be together. Now he has taken me to rule in his kingdom. He’s fine, he’s knightly. But he’s not you. My beloved, I need you. I’ll miss you forever. My everything, darling. The queen to my queen. Maeson Roucoulet Maeson Roucoulet (they/them) currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and is originally from Connecticut. They've been writing poetry since around the fourth grade, and were published in The Ram Page and The Ekphrastic Review. Maeson is now interested in creative writing, literature, and music. ** Where be Your Jibes Now? From Hamlet, By William Shakespeare I gaze into the sockets of your eyes, See mischief there, embedded in your skull, As if pale bone and shadow could disguise The memory of jest, before the days were dull. And now my one true love Ophelia Has slipped beneath the lake, her golden hair threaded into the silky weeds, skin a ghostly shade of moonshine cast in prayer. Yorick, is it fair to seek revenge? I miss the rhythmic skip of childhood, Your smiling face and mine a mirrored lens But nothing breathes where once you stood. We all return our bones to soil and earth, We are but spectres, we have no worth. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. 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 pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published in the next month. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Eternal Grin You made us howl, primed our pumps with spurts of laughter that - at last - exploded in geyser guffaws, soaked with tears. Your last line echoed inside, erupting in spastic dribbling giggles long after your schtick was done. As a child, I assumed you fed us funny fluff. Later, I noticed glinting diamonds in the mix, brilliance for the brave, razor edges making their mark. You mocked everything, even the King, to his face. You grabbed your manhood to proclaim my father as ever-protective of the Crown Jewels. Or not. Reckless, foolish, suicidal. Honest. Beneath your eternal grin, you still mean it. Life is brief; Choose with the end in mind. What constitutes an adequate choice? One in which you die trying and never miss the Joke. Sheila Murphy Sheila Murphy writes poems to slow down. She is a spiritual director, cancer survivor, retreat leader and adventurer. She is a music director and pub fiddler. She has published poems in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction and The Ekphrastic Review. Sheila lives in coastal Maine, is married and has two adult offspring. She plays fiddle, guitar and piano. ** A Reflection Of Dignity “While if not in jest; we speak of life.” One should easily be able to distinguish the premises- What is Good and what is Right. My death… A concept- Of past lives lived-on to recount new visions. This skewed view of progress-watched. From above. Recounting- Having grown old enough to see- Bones that rejoice! Flesh, and the air ! I had loved. Once Michael W Piercy "At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction you will find my work, you will find me. Taking on memories and the present moment. Thinking- with an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology and Science are at the core of my writing. I have found that I am a synthesizer-managing ideas which to not always cohere. Trying to manipulate- Ideas." Michael W. Piercy ** I hold in tattoos the diary pages, fossilized last spoken now I want no more- I hold the hollows of time soaked in cries, I hold an evening falling quiet. Beyond ashen white is coloring the sky, dusty gold mounting in steppe meadows- impregnated air falters forgiveness into hollows in my hand I hold. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Hamletiana Shakespeariana Heavy is the golden crown - its cold pushing from top down until history’s contender, once mouthful with pride, is reduced to clenched teeth fitting even into a girl’s palm – Zen flesh, Zen bones – fixed gaze taming the ghost caved into the bony orbits, while her other hand gracefully guides her intent to pat the being that is not. What fancy drives this curiosity? To touch or not to touch the un-being? That is the moment of Vicente’s screening into the trial of a Zen flesh to extract from a Zen bone the meaning. To be or not to be? Was Hamlet right or wrong to pose that brief and fateful polar question that bites the mankind’s lips ever since he aired it on that eventful Shakespearean page – as if on the heavenly stage. To be or not to be? Was he asking the earth or the heaven? This is uncertain, so, as each forfeits the other, Hamlet stood between these two contrary judges, who live in balanced tension for all ages, while he - pained, alone, to crown sworn, mind on earth, heart in heaven, took the enemy’s blade while his hand dropped his sword into the heart of his unrequited question. Now she tries to draw the answer from the teeth clenching it - maybe or maybe not - her pat may un-bite that tight knot, but until then while looking straight into his un-being eyes as in a trance she tells him her answer: thinking outside the box, be it golden crown or carton hoax, and being not prince Hamlet but from any hamlet on the planet freely flying my orange banner of a hair, over my white romantic frills, covering my heart’s beats, above my eyes’ inquisitive trills, seems a sufficiently noble reason for being and never put anything squeezing over my head, save heaven – a crown for each and all, auspicious for the mind’s orbital descend to the voiceless sound of Hamlet’s answer as written in the stars and these Zen bones. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas, MA in linguistics and culture has studied and taught at Universities of Sofia, Delhi and London and authored a book on Mediaeval art for The British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems feature on often on The Ekphrastic Review, among others. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni, 2021. ** Ophelia Lives On a different balcony, Or on a different page, The fool’s skull wears the king’s crown, And Ophelia lives To have an existential crisis of her own. Hamlet had hated the neck tattoo, It (nearly) drove him mad. “But you know how I love flowers, love,” she said, But he didn’t seem to hear. “Alas, poor Yorick,” she said to the skull, “You poor memento mori, you prop, Nothing more than what you stand for now, not what you really were. You were a man of infinite jest, but no one is laughing now. Only a man would harp on the inevitability of death Instead of remembering the possibilities of life. Life is only futile to those who fail to truly live. Sure, Alex the Great is naught but dust now, But damn did his life seem fun. Pillage and plunder and all.” Ophelia put down Yorick’s skull, tucked her long hair into her shirt to create the illusion of manhood, and felt the hilt of her sword at her side. A voice called her name from off stage. “I do not know, my lord, what I should think,” she answered, gripping the sword and smiling. “Though I have a few ideas.” Maggi McGettigan Maggi McGettigan is a writer and literature lover living in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Her work has most recently been published in the beautiful Creatopia magazine, Capsule Stories, and The Stonecrop Review, and can be found at maggimcgettigan.com. ** Alas, Poor Yorick, You Knew Me too Well You, the Fool, most often recognized as the smartest man at court, but only to those with sharp minds themselves – you remain masked by buffoonery, me by beauty, both locked into our accepted roles. Such a shame! Two star-crossed lovers who could have had it all, but for your silly obsession with virtue. That second night after my arrival, you s o m e r s a u l t e d across the banquet hall, a rose between your lips, as you bowed and presented it to me. Milady, the rumors are true! But your niece Ophelia is a pale version of you. What remarkable beauty for a woman of 517 years! A cacophony of laughter eclipsed the band of musicians. I laughed, too. My dear Yore? Yock? Yammer? Pray you, forgive my forgetting your name. You are so kind and generous in your praise for a woman of 666 winters. Laughter exploded again as our eyes locked on each other, recognizing the truth. We could neither one be trusted to keep the other’s secrets. You would lie dead within the week. Death upon death, madness upon madness followed according to plan. Yet, all these years later, you remain my only regret. 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. Alarie was thrilled to win Lorette C. Luzajic’s first Editor’s Pick for the Ekphrastic Fantastic Award and to have her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, named Director’s Choice at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in 2022. alariepoet.com ** Reality Mends Cowards I ate some food today. I don’t remember what I ate. Just that I wasn’t hungry. What terrifies me more than grief and fear? It’s apathy. Indifference. I think. The numbness spreads and suddenly I have another tattoo. Still can’t feel the grief. They know not getting out of bed is a sign. The only thing that makes me eat is habit. All everlasting kingdoms fall to dust and here old Yorick stands, a mockery. I don’t think people understand all this. If they understood, maybe they’d offer help. All power stripped away and nought remains. I smiled for the first time in a year. It felt unsettling, like the wrong size shoe. Is depression made only for princes? 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 underpaid English and Theatre teacher. She has acted, directed and written her way through her undergraduate years, which are now safely behind her. She is a published poet, with several pieces appearing online at the The Ekphrastic Review. ** Your Dagger Look Hello again fine-fashion crisp murderess. Here we are, some time since my pooled blood washed-up in the lure of this blind-white-white, and all the blues have cooled, less royal dark than I recall. They no longer arrow, but bend lithe over the curve of your iced lyse-blue eye, onto classy cuff-ruffles, silken but stiff enough to hold in the tonnage of leaden deeds. Here now, touching dabs of child-green accenting, clean, clean. And a grey- tinged green veins along through, like a sequined spider’s micro-snipped web, within your sprawling neck tattoo, then wisps up into the reign of (oh-wow-it’s-grown) an ever-sharpening—nearly a jab of rosy cheekbone. You must to be sure, again, I am still tangibly dead. (my yellow-gold skull un-convincing) And so, can only threaten you from afar. But the dead have little to say on matters of state. You must keep piercing me however long it takes to sever a word or stab one clear out, clueless to what the rest of us access first: the little the dead have left to give, poor we are in words. We’re numbers of globed worlds away from where this is. And you won’t reflect on how like us you really are, as your framed word-pearls empty-out officially at the end of every day, tip elegant, back to the base of your taut neck, too rigid to ever betray—but in the flattened press of dirty red hair blunt cut just yesterday, there it is, a redder red-trickle along your severe midline part. You cannot see it very well in the million mirrors turning to follow you. Your brutal cold eyes pin you apart from a critical view. SP Singer I hope to always be starting over as a poet, satisfaction a good stretch ahead, blind-illumina colours in most directions as I slowly go. ** Yorick of Mine Alas, Yorick, lover of mine, I stole your life, As you stole my heart. You loved Ophelia best, My poor sister, Not of blood, but of my soul. You, my silent king, I still watch you closely, Searching for your fancy. Corrie Pappas Corrie Pappas is a small business owner living outside Boston. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and she is the author of the children’s book, Come Along and Dream. ** Memento Mori Yorick, you are beautiful in death I rubbed your skull with soft cloths until it shone And wrote your name in black letters on the front So no-one would mistake the skull for mine. On your head, I placed a golden crown To remember that this is how all mortals end Kings, and the sons of kings, and the kings’ fair daughters My books, my spotless linen shirt My lustrous hair, of which I am so vain Will turn to dust, will crumble into earth. As an aside, what gives, Señor Vicente? At least, unlike my sisters, I have clothes Still, I’m in some kind of pre-Raphaelite freak show My neck’s too long, my hands, impossible A hundred years from now, when gravediggers find my bones Beneath crumbling stone, the letters worn away They will call me Spider because of my long, long hands. Karen Kebarle Karen Kebarle was born in Edmonton, Alberta, but has lived in Ottawa, Ontario for the last 27 years. She holds an MA and PhD in English and has always had a soft spot for Shakespeare. She has taught grade school, college, and university, and now teaches English as a Second Language to public servants in the Government of Canada. One of her favourite jobs was her two years working as an art interpreter at the National Gallery of Canada.  Whirlpool, by Dusti Bongé (USA) 1956 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 Whirlpool, by Dusti Bonge. Deadline is November 24, 2023. Curator and judge for this challenge is TER editor Sandi Stromberg. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. ** Dear Writers and Lovers of The Ekphrastic Review, One of the wonderful gifts of being an editor at The Ekphrastic Review is that on occasion I’m able to offer a biweekly challenge. The possibility has me constantly on the alert. As I wander through museums, galleries, art fairs, thumb through books on art, I’m always considering possibilities: Would this artwork be evocative enough? Would this artist’s life intrigue? Would writers feel driven to respond, to commit images and thoughts to paper? Recently, in one of life’s delicious moments of synchronicity, I became friends with a man affiliated with the Dusti Bongé Foundation. As he told me about this remarkable artist—who is finally receiving the accolades and recognition she deserves—I was intrigued. I hope you will be, too. See her short bio below with news about her current exhibition and a video in which she shares her Life as an Artist. In the meantime, I offer you Bongé’s Whirlpool and hope it will inspire! Sandi Stromberg Dusti Bongé (1903-1993), née Eunice Swetman, was a member of the first generation of abstract expressionist painters. A native of Biloxi, Mississippi, she showed with the groundbreaking Betty Parsons Gallery in New York from the 1940s through the 1970s, in the company of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and the other major players of that time. though her part in that revolutionary chapter of American art history is only now being recognized. 30 years after her passing. Dusti Bongé: The Creative Life is currently on exhibit at the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, Alabama, July 13, 2023-September 14, 2024. A video of her in her studio discussing her life as an artist is available here Dusti Bonge' | MPB. ** 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 ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. 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 BONGE 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, November 24, 2023. 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.  Untitled, reverse glass painting, Qing Dynasty (China) c. 1800s Upon Peering at an Untitled Reverse Glass Painting Fir trees surround the halls of the courtyard complex with reverse-facing rooms, side houses, and an entrance gate shielded by a spirit screen of inkstone engraved with terrain mirroring the landscape beyond the walls. Bellflowers are somewhere. Plum blossoms are somewhere. Floral motifs decorate red and blue garments. A pearl necklace adorns a neck and a headpiece is like a flat crown. Someone points to the sky. He says things with confidence. Someone sighs. Her court needs to tend to other matters. Messengers argue. Fog thickens around the terraces. No page walks through a courtyard. Moss grows on sculptures in a rock garden and stone arrangements resemble far-off mountains. A passerby cups a blossom, pondering a trek through Huashan. Lilac wisteria spirals around a monument. Flute melodies reach the court from a distant chamber. Tempos sync to phoenix birds twittering above the Hill of Wang Fu. Efren Laya Cruzada Efren Laya Cruzada is a poet who was born in the Philippines and grew up in a small town in South Texas. He studied English and American Literature and Creative Writing at New York University. He is the author of Grand Flood: a poem. His poems have been published in several journals, with work forthcoming in The Tiger Moth Review, The Stardust Review, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal. Currently, he is working on a poetry collection based on his travels throughout Latin America and Asia. His day jobs have included coaching chess, teaching ESL, and writing for blockchain media companies. He now resides in Austin, Texas. ** You Dare And Impress What a pose! A beauty that glows Your hands you unfold Able to power hold You assert authority And bury fragility A voice not to suppress You dare and impress A myriad of pearls You earned with no fears You uncover stories True fights not fancies You rise within an Empire A tiger’s fur your attire Your high ranking a pride Reversing history tide. Besma Riabi Dziri Besma Riabi Dziri is a teacher of the English language in high school in Tunis. She was born in Tunis, Tunisia on September 20th, 1966. She graduated from Manouba University of Arts. She has a great passion for creative writing. She writes short stories and fables. Poetry has gripped her very ink and captured her heart and soul. Through her poetry, Besma Riabi Dziri expresses her thoughts which include serving and enlightening Humanity, tolerance of beliefs and the importance of Love, benevolence, forgiveness in the soul’s renewal and growth. She avidly believes in the ability of poetry to transcend our limitations as human beings, beautify and elevate the soul and shine Love and Light into Humanity. ** The Qianlong Emperor's Consort Being Entertained in His Absence The windows on the universe were closed behind translucent screens. His senses: eyes and nostrils, ears and mouth, the hours he dozed, noted no new kingdoms fall or rise. Jade and jewels stud the mural walls; inside and out, extinctions multiply. The skies are overheated, fire falls when stars explode, the oceans pale. We try to kill whole species, not just one by one. Preserving what is wild is self-defeating. We mourn the glut of nature, saving none, but creatures do not mourn our moral bleating. A sage once dreamt he was a butterfly. Or was the dream the insect's? Toss the die! Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who has had a long fascination with the art and history of the Middle Kingdom. He has taught a large number of students from China. His poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Lyric, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and a number of other places. ** Red I was spat forth from the mouth of Changbai, the volcano: my beautiful molten self so red hot I ate everything in my path. I leapt off the orb of the sun: I crept into rowan berries and the goji, the lychee and the jujubi. From there to the palette of Zhu Da, diminutive painter of emperors and empresses; thence imperially decreed the royal colour on robes, pennants, standards such a red as I am! Piercing the sky with victory and valour primping the chests and Pom poms of warriors and court eunuchs alike billowing in the breeze - oh ecstasy! - across the mountains of Guangdong. There will be other colours, of course, dull lapis lazuli or insipid egg yolk yellow- but I am the colour of China. Taste, touch and feel - I am everywhere. Lucie Payne Lucie is a retired Librarian who is writing in and around Oxfordshire and Sussex; sometimes getting published in the wonderful Ekphrastic Review and other places. ** The [A]lternative [W]orldview for Shaohua Yan "He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth." J. W. von Goethe 1. Book Time “Voila! … Now, this discourse – 1421: The Year China Discovered America (G. Menzies) – is Le Portal to the [A]lternative [W]orldview—id est, contrary to the (in)famous Christopher Columbus, The Explorer, grand narrative,” I ensure that I’m amply audible to her eardrums, so she knows ‘tis Book Time for me, “ … the Chinese were the original inventors of: paper making (105CE) AND type printing (960–1279 CE) AND gunpowder (1100 CE) AND compass (2nd century BCE–1st century CE) AND mechanical clock (715 CE) AND tea production (2,737 BCE) AND silk (4,000 BCE) AND umbrella (300 CE) AND iron smelting (1050–256 BCE) AND earthquake detector/seismograph (132 CE) AND rocket (228 CE) AND kite (muyuan: wooden kite) (1,000BCE) AND seed drill (1,500 BCE) AND paper money (9th century CE) AND acupuncture (300s BCE) AND … .” But, I don’t read this chronological account out loud, ‘cause I don’t need to, ‘cause she’s CHINESE – she knows her [H]istory! … “Now, that’sNews! This definitely calls for the Grand/Meta-Narratives—especially, the ones floating around in the West (under the canopy of Modernism)—to be revisited! … [Re]visited in the manner of a Deconstruction of the Civilisation – exempli gratia, in the Post-Modernist / Post-Structuralist context!”[1] The philosopher in me is provoked, but I keep the agitation(s) from treading onto the tongue. 2. Rhetorical Questions “Hmm. So, how come the Arabs (the Bedouins) still had to use the animal hides to document their folklores and poetry and songs back then (6th–7th century CE)? Hmm. And would the conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul) by the Turks—by Sultan Mehmet II (The Fetih/Gazi) (1453 CE)—even have been possible without the gun powder/guns/cannons, in the first place? Hmm. And what of the Islamic Renaissance – with the Al-Mu’tazilites et alia (8th–9th century CE) –[2] and the European Renaissance – with the Medici Family et alia (15th century CE) –[3] would these historical epochs even have materialised without the Chinese Factor? Hmm.” I can see/hear/smell/touch these – and multifaceted other – rhetorical questions ricocheting off each other inside my thalamus now; but, I spare my grey matter the immaterial labour. 3. Bedtime As I contemplate braving the idea of turning a dozen+ more pages over to sort the assist of the said scholar with the hunt for the theses to the aforesaid hodgepodge in my walnut shaped mind: enveloped in the Chinese-red nighty, wearing my favourite Eau de Toilette (Floral Aquatic Cool Water – Davidoff), 2-3 wine glasses of La Rosa down; she relays a signal to me with her cat eyes: (put the book away // screw the cap back on the pen // switch the table lamp off) ‘tis Bedtime! Saad Ali [1]. Postmodernism/Poststructuralism: An Intellectual Movement that rejects the objectivism/determinism/rationalism of the (European) Modernity, or the so-called Age of Enlightenment (18th–19th century CE), i.e., ‘one frame fits all the portraits.’ The movement professes relativism/pluralism/subjectivity as opposed to the ideology of the ‘universal truth,’ or ‘universal meaning,’ or ‘universal language,’ or ‘universal human nature,’ et cetera, i.e., there’re multiple truths/realities and meanings, and that every culture and language is valid in its own (unique) way. [2]. Al-Mu’tazilites (The Separated): A Philosophical/Theological School of Thought—proponents of: 1) ‘something comes from something’ metaphysics, 2) atomism (following the classical Greek tradition), 3) speculative theology, 4) man’s free will, 5) power of human intelligence and reasoning, et cetera. Some of the significant figures of the Movement included: Al-Kindi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Ishaq, Al-Mahamali, Al-Asturlabiyya, et alia – who were also the key members of the Graeco-Arabic Translation Project. [3]. The House of Medici: The Family is also known as: 1) The Godfathers of the (European) Renaissance, and 2) Makers of Popes, Queens, and Artists. They are also famous for funding the inventions of the piano and opera, and being the Patrons of da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Machiavelli, Galileo, et alia. Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up and educated in the United Kingdom and Pakistan. He is a poet-philosopher and literary translator. His new collection of poems is titled Owl Of Pines: Sunyata (AuthorHouse, 2021). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, and Tagore. He enjoys learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities/towns on foot. To learn further about his work, please visit www.saadalipoetry.com, or www.facebook.com/owlofpines. ** Come to Us, Come to Us Come to us, come to us, our empress beckons you forth. Shout to us, shout to us! What news brings you from the North? Tell us this story, what is it you know? Your brave tales of glory, none more filled with woe. The bard starts to laugh! A victory song! Bring our carafes! We're here, we belong! You needed success, my empress, we brought it. We'd bring nothing less, you've said it, we've fought it. Please, celebrate, all! Today is so joyous! No need for more brawls. No one can destroy us. Relax, my brave soldiers. Lay down to rest. No more weight on your shoulders. From you, we are blessed. Maeson Roucoulet Maeson Roucoulet (they/them) currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and is originally from Connecticut. They've been writing poetry since around the fourth grade, and were published in The Ram Page. Maeson is now interested in creative writing, literature, and music. ** Composition in Green The empress calls her court the Qing — 清 — qīng -- compounded splash of 'water,' block of 'green' yet not just one but all the shades of spring signify together Pure. Bright. Clean. 'Green is from blue and green is more than blue.' From inky depth flows life into the sheaves each year edenic. Troops scythe pale bamboo among blue hills, green ponds, black leaves. Thus she knows herself immortal: all is one blurred coluor swimming in the sleepy grass blooming at edges. Belly-up the sun pours half-light mediate through glass. Katy Borobia Katy Borobia is a recent graduate of Hillsdale College. She studied Mandarin Chinese for four years. Her poems and prose have been published by Ekstasis, Glass Mountain, and several others. After trying her hand at service, horticulture, 4-H education, and editing, Katy still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up. ** The Qing Dynasty As the youngest, one must earn her respect. I dance and twirl trying to win mother over. A facial heatwave when I make the connection: My siblings before me received life on gold platters. Their smug stares burning holes in my backside She glares, I know she reads minds. Ellen Canarelli Ellen Canarelli is a lifelong artist and writer who resides in Cassville, New York, where there are more cows than people. She spends all winter skiing, something she'd loved doing with her family since she was a very little girl. In the summer, she spends her days running for miles, soaking up the sun. ** Celebration Cheerful noise fills the area dancing, laughing, and joy As I sit on my throne and look from afar I appreciate nature's beauty– the trees swaying “hello” and the wispy smells from the garden Today is a day of celebration As they continue to laugh and dance I sit on my throne feeling content Tyler Carr Tyler Carr is a writer from Middletown, New York. She enjoys journaling and photography during her free time. ** The Purity Shines The purity shines hiding the hostility reds and blues draw the eye away from the pain the violence the individual hides their face behind the glass ignoring the blood spilled mixing with the paint Mo Flanagan Mo Flanagan is an author out of Boylston, Massachusetts. They enjoy reading prose and poetry. ** About-Face Who can shade upside down? Not one from the comfort of a death- rattle recliner or from boots tied to a gallows rope. Not one from the other side of the equator. Reverse engineering. Deconstruction. The first is the first and the last shall be last (in a non-Biblical manner). Facial hair. Beards. Brows. Lashes. Darks and blacks. Smirks. Crooked lines of nostrils. Crowns and caps. Clothes. Outer layers wait on belts and swords. Shameless hubris of cheeks lie tidy before the already shadowed hands brush their spears. Todd Sukany Todd Sukany, a Pushcart nominee, lives in Pleasant Hope, Missouri, with his wife of over 40 years. His work recently appears in The Christian Century and Fireflies’ Light. A native of Michigan, Sukany stays busy running, playing music, and caring for three rescue dogs and three cats. ** Besotted I'll hold a parasol above your head, though my palms sweat blood on the handle, fingers close to breaking with the strain, the long hours. I'll present you with a scroll, lacquered tube to hold it, hung with braided tassels. The scroll will say I love you, calligraphed a thousand times in sumi ink. I'll have my dancers dance for you in soft leather slippers, embroidered cloaks, gold-threaded caps with scarlet pom poms. Their beards will be clipped for the occasion, waxed to a point a yard beneath the chin, scented with the sweetest mountain flowers: harebells, pennyroyal, peony. My jesters will impress you, tugging jokes from their throats like knotted scarves: endless hilarity, enough to make you helpless. They'll cease at my command, but I'll bide my time, waiting till you turn to me with wonder, gratitude, and love. Look what he can do, you'll say, this besotted man, devoted bearer of the parasol: he commands the sun, and everything beneath. I'll take your face in my aching hands, kiss your pale, shadow-cool forehead, my triumph tinged with sadness: we both know in our hearts I'll regret it, except in that moment when I had it all. Paul McDonald Paul McDonald taught at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, where he ran the Creative Writing Programme before taking early retirement in 2019. He is the author of 20 books to date, which includes fiction, poetry and scholarship. His most recent poetry collection is 60 Poems (Greenwich Exchange Publishing, 2023) ** Was This Richard Scarry’s Inspiration? Was this 1800s Qing Court scene Richard Scarry’s inspiration for his ultra detailed portrayals of modern homes, schools, even plain air pictures? Or perhaps he traveled through time and saw for himself that Empress holding court her jester, her advisor, her garden and the lands beyond? Perhaps he’s the one who painted it? If there are symbols here among these elements my old eyes, my mind, both flummoxed and distracted by so much detail, leaps from place to place in the painting. Scarry was a favourite of my laser-focused daughter who easily moved among Scarry’s many points of interest cataloguing , organizing all in her logical mind. My son and I put Scarry aside preferring pictures with fewer foci. Here, I note the Empress is smiling from under the arbor, and that she is robed in red silks of happiness. Perhaps her smile is aimed at the entertainer—is he swallowing a snake or sword or juggling for her? The others are so serious—maybe they will smile in the next picture, released from sober countenance only after the Empress smiles? My safest point of reference, if this were my only picture of the court, would be, are the two birds in the far-left corner gliding above, maintaining a good distance from all of this human interaction while gracing the sky with their gentle presence. I think my son would also have liked them best. Scarry drew his equally busy scenes for children to give them a safe view of the busy adult world all around them. I wonder how many Chinese children “read” about the court using this painting? I wonder how many of them, like my son and I were tired by these views and wished the painting and real life was simpler? Joan Leotta Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales of food, family, strong women. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a two-time Pushcart nominee, twice Best of the Net nominee, and a 2022 runner-up in Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, CNF, and fiction appear in Impspired, Ekphrastic Review, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, Yellow Mama, Mystery Tribune, Ovunquesiamo, Synkroniciti, MacQueen’s Quinterly, SoFLoPoJo, and many others in US, UK, Australia, Germany, and more. Her poetry chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, (Finishing Line) and Feathers on Stone, (Main Street Rag). ** Victory Celebration On a mild spring afternoon ginkgo and Chinese elm trees gently sway in a light breeze while a rust-coloured sky embraces distant mountains. Adorned in red ceremonial attire embroidered in gold and silver threads, Empress Cixi is ensconced on a hand-carved wooden throne, where she holds court with artisans. Like a victorious soldier, I hold the red dynasty victory banner behind her. Wei, a musician, plays the erhu for her listening pleasure until the last orange strands of daylight pale. Dr. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Nameless Roads (2019) and Driving Long Distance (forthcoming 2024). 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), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** The Noble Dowager (for Kenneth Rexroth) Everything is ornament for her brocades and lavish swirls are the formal dress of a seated Empress along with her courtiers and palace guards in their plumage. Vivid Autumn colors that shame the trees and sky, The extravagance of each costume is a temple unto itself. I realize Lady you are the pure light of heaven though from a distance to a man whose crops are dust and who watches his family starve all this grandeur and pomp, these most intricate patterns are not beautiful but are a fire raging through his country and his belly. Daniel Brown Daniel Brown has recently published at age 72 his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician and Chronogram Magazine and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson 2023 gallery presentation Poets Respond To Art in Poughkeepsie, NY. ** The Emperor of the Moon Since antiquity, there have been many emperors. The emperor of the moon is the most mystical. Riding bareback above clouds like a lost explorer Galloping towards white stars, he grew critical Looking for his bride; oh, where art thou my - Juliet? I have remained faithful during my ceaseless searching But your distance has always remained the same, I regret. There are too many stars twinkling that are pretending- To be in keeping with my carnal desires, but those, Those stars were never in his thoughts, never his tempting. The emperor of the moon was now predisposed To idly hiding or occasionally peeping Rather than dashing across the skies, he hid in the dark Rather than crying, oh, where art thou my - Juliet? He sent his people to look; he sent a meadowlark Men did shout, and the meadowlark sang the alphabet. His men returned to their quarters each evening solemn The meadowlark flew and flew, singing in the heavens The emperor felt abandoned and in the doldrums As each morning, it sang and was lit incandescent. Why on earth does it sing so triumphant and happy? And while his back was turned, he felt a glowing warmth. And his men came running; here is your bride and aptly She arrives behind your throne brightly and adorned. The emperor gasped at her radiance of gold In all his endless days of looking, he couldn't find her Until she found him in a story that is often retold A few centuries later - about how he found her? 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. ** Whom Shall I Blame or Groom? I’m cleaned, prepped, reversed, glistening. Lying in greedy-hungry, heavily scented, oiled-soiled palms like stolen gold coins, ready to play. In beds or casinos. My disrespect is not sanctioned by Gods. So, whom shall I blame for breakage, confusion, pain-leaving, bloody stain? Or whom shall I groom for luck, rethinking, piety, improved-swapped mentality? Or whom shall I groom in wonderous faith? Humans? Animals? Animals may not seek mirrors, glass, or gold. And the mean don’t see them; they just destroy. And court jesters are punished, ridiculed, never to be set free. Roads are blocked. Passages gloated. Brains are lard-clogged. I hang my coat on the stand. Throw open the tight, molding windows. Watch the queen on the throne. Watch the hungry men drool and prepare for antics. Watch nature mingle with my thoughts, my fears, my smiles, and my promises, like nervous pregnant mothers, human or animal, just before delivery. Whom shall I blame, and whom shall I groom? Anita Nahal Anita Nahal, Ph.D., CDP, is a two-time Pushcart Prize-nominated Indian American author-academic. Her third poetry collection, What’s wrong with us Kali women? (Kelsay, 2021) was nominated by Cyril Dabydeen as the best poetry book, 2021 for British Ars Notoria, and is mandatory reading in a multicultural society course at Utrecht University. Her just released novel, drenched thoughts is also prescribed in the same course and university. Anita is the editor of the Newsletter, Poetry Virginia Society and secretary of the Montgomery Chapter, Maryland Writers Association. She teaches at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC. Anita is the daughter of Sahitya Akademi award-winning Indian novelist, Late Dr. Chaman Nahal, and educationist Late Dr. Sudarshna Nahal. www.anitanahal.com **  Hamlet Shakespeariana, Serie Heroinas Literarias, by Fernando Vicente (Spain) 2022. Used with artist permission. 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 Hamlet Shakespeariana, by Fernando Vicente. Deadline is November 10, 2023. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. We are thrilled to have Kate Copeland as our challenge editor and curator for this session. She has been a guest editor several times already, and brings a wonderful variety of artistic styles and talents to our attention. We are also delighted to announce that Kate has joined our editorial team here at The Ekphrastic Review and will continue to serve our readers as a challenge editor approximately every other month. Please join us in welcoming her. She generously shares her time and her curious eye on behalf of the journal, our writers, and our readers. THANK YOU KATE!!!! ** Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, This ekphrastic challenge offers you the incredible work of Spanish artist Fernando Vicente! Fernando is a self-taught illustrator, whose work was first published in magazines during “la movida madrileña," the countercultural movement in Madrid during the Spanish transition to democracy. His art has appeared in newspapers and various (cultural) supplements, Fernando has also illustrated book covers and record sleeves. Find his work via: https://www.fernandovicente.es/en/ The artwork I have chosen is part of the series Heroinas Literarias and is called Hamlet Shakespeariana (see for the whole series: https://www.fernandovicente.es/en/fine-art/heroinas-literarias/ ). It is an amazing piece and I know it will just prompt you into writing the most beautiful lines and stanzas! Thank you so much for submitting your writing, I am very much looking forward to reading your work. And thank you Lorette, for having me on board as challenge-editor and curator for TER, I am looking forward to choosing art and reading beautiful words every two months indeed. I feel very honoured to be included in your wonderful Ekphrastic Review! Enjoy the Vicente Shakespeariana challenge everyone, Kate Copeland ** 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 ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. 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 VICENTE 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, November 10, 2023. 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.  Niagara Falls, by Frederic Edwin Church (USA) 1857 Dear Ekphrastic Writers and Readers, I was mesmerized and intrigued by the submissions received for this challenge. Since I grew up on the banks of the Niagara River with picnics near thundering falls, words like these bring me back to my childhood. I was enamored with poems/words that captured the sheer power of the falls, making me feel its pull, drawing me back to that time. I recall the tiny speck Maid of the Mist, seen from the railing, walking clad in the thick yellow slickers and boots provided, later, a disposal poncho through the Cave of the Winds, marveled at the spectacular rainbows, dry rocks in 1969 when they diverted water from the falls, on the Canadian side from the top of the Skyline tower restaurant in 1964, the view breathtaking. I also enjoyed a few renditions of those who also have Falls memories. Thanks to all who sent their work – so many poems/ stories, it was a difficult decision to choose… Special thanks to The Ekphrastic Review editor Lorette C. Luzajic for allowing me to serve as guest editor for this wonderful publication! Best Regards, Julie A. Dickson ** Spellbound The last time I knew innocence I was surrounded by breathtaking steadily booming over the falls misting our awe-struck faces confirmation we are mere specks in the realm of natural wonders. I could have lingered there forever drinking in its mesmerizing thunder unknowingly balanced on the fraying thread between well-being and illness before scalpels, needles, chemical treatment made their grand entrance; momentarily living in the presence of ferocious power, I could not get enough. Elaine Sorrentino Elaine Sorrentino, communications director by day, poet by night, has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Global Poemic, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Panoply, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at wildamorris.blogspot.com. She was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. ** To Frederic Edwin Church Regarding Niagara Falls So much like ours, your river's course becomes the path of nature's force embracing ever lower plane and carving ever deeper main except where soil is bared to rock or rise becomes a stubborn block that, barring flood, will be its bound or island it will flow around as ending tributaries merge and hasten more the mounting surge to roar of sudden, fated falls, the splendor eye so well recalls by glimmer of prismatic twist in fountain of its risen mist. Portly Bard Portly Bard. Old man. Ekphrastic fan. 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. ** An Item on my Old Bucket List Niagara—some say the name is a bastardised form of the Iroquois "Onguiaahra." They say it means "The Strait." Now "Niagara" has become associated with a thunderous image. That I can feel. I only ever imagined its deafening voice, its power, its white foam, its cold spray, imagined myself in a slicker with a hood-- preferably blue (or red)-- on a boat, getting nearer, nearer, nearer, before we are being sucked into unimaginable depths, Charybdis and Scylla, my fellow passenger quiet in the face of such a relentless force. When I close my eyes I see dark clouds pulling up, attracted like magnets to a cauldron of deep water, angry foam, killer rocks. The door to Hades. Who will pay the ferryman? 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 seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, once for the Best of Net. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. A new collection, Life Stuff, has been scheduled by Kelsay Books for February 2024. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** The Ice Crack’d, 1912 Let’s go back to a time forgotten- Time when all stood still at this reckoning When the stars spewed light like a string of shiny pearls Gleaming, coyly placed, half-hidden in a breast To enkindle the earth with heavenly illumination And begin Niagara's immaculate creation Falling, tumbling river dodging over rock formations Over and over: an international maritime border Canada’s pride America’s daughter Danger lies in beauty wild and unforgiving Many years Niagara made a sparkling temptation When Honeymooners and brazen lads took the chance To walk upon the icy bridge made of water It seemed a game, not risking life in great parlance The tall, strapping boys built a warm beverage station Canadian citizens welcomed Americans as close relations The menacing sun appeared as a propitious omen, Settling over that imagined, glassy isthmus Until a fatal crack shuddered out a warning: Jagged flaws in the ice were quickly forming Honeymooners from New York were taking in the sights The young Quebecians downing cups of hot chocolate All looked to one another, faces full of fright Far too late to make preparations Crossing an international border without immigration Was a delightful idea with just the right amount of mystery Until the couple, sharing one last kiss Before rushing waters pulled them apart, taking their breath Were noted in the annals of Niagara's history By boys turned into men by cheating death. 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, Poetry Quarterly, Haikuniverse, The Light Ekphrastic and Mediterranean Poetry, among others. She has recently read live for The Poet’s Corner. Debbie loves beachcombing on Tybee Island and hanging out with her husband, Burt, and dog, Maddie. ** Nik Wallenda Walks a Wire Across Niagara Falls Into a theatre of wind and mist a cable dips, disappears. He moves steadily, each step shortening the improbable. He dissolves into thunder. The camera loses then finds his face soaked, focused on distance relenting. In shoes his mother made elk-skin suede his feet curl along the wire. He tells the cameraman his arms are numb. Weighs the long pole in sighs, side to side. And we can see the waters waiting the letting go the urge to. He inches ahead each second of inertia a pinpoint from which we too step forward. Diana Cole This poem was previously published in Muddy River Poetry Review. Diana Cole, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has had poems published in numerous journals including Poetry East, Spillway, Cider Press Review, The Public's Radio 89.3, Friends Journal, Verse Daily, The New Verse News and Orison Books. Her chapbook, Songs By Heart was published in 2018 by Iris Press. She is an editor for The Crosswinds Poetry Journal and has taught a number of poetry workshops. Her full length book, Between Selves, was released this summer by Indian Press, Cyberwit.net. She has been published a number of times in The Ekphrastic Review. When not writing she is a stained glass artist. ** Dad, You Have Left Us with this falling desire to find the most magic breezes, the best of both worlds, to drive some mighty drives. Let us go back to 1986, when my parents opened shop then proudly spent the money in big cities, on bigger cars, at biggest waterfalls. A road trip, and all is grand, all goes fast, and y’all say how-ya-folks-doing. Yellow taxis, subway steams, rush-hush diners, sneakers' streams. We got culturally confused over morning coffee with no menu, the fries on every sandwich, the toppings on every sundae, in every National Park. No end to the eye, no end to the sights. Wonderstruck, we got and our giant car past traffic lights swinging from wires, we got pulled over on I-90, by shiny-sunglass-sheriff. Onwards to Graceland, for the King, forwards to the Falls, for dear Marilyn. Liquid silver river, blue-green falling with no fear for borders, or for yellow ponchos. Nature is a thunderous wonder, nature at its thunderous best. Feeling like film-living in the mist of rainbows, the foredeck pointing at caves and hidden myths. Dad, you have left us with this healing desire to hold on to memories, of cities, of road trips, the water. You have shown us your tall way, to fall without fail. Kate Copeland (To my dad, October 1997) ** Falling Days Now the gulls have chased away the long- and lacewings, Now the silt has risen from the river floor to overturn her days and ways, and now their boat trip has not shown the mist she had hoped to see, she sees that rainbows still fall on, that tides rest at her feet and barrels drift away anyway. He might brighten up once they drive down to the lakes, once he stops mocking her love for the waterfalls that make her think straight, he wants to control her rise and fall but her moods to sing like birds and butterflies, is a step further towards the edge of falling days, where her best choice is, to choose her road carefully, is to be aware of plunging without sinking. To see he might just be in her way. Dive in, dear girl, but rise, down the shiny waves. Kate Copeland Kate Copeland started absorbing words ever since a little lass. Her love for language led her to teaching; her love for art & water to poetry…please find her pieces at The Ekphrastic Review, First Lit.Review-East, Wildfire Words, The Weekly/Five South, AltPoetry and others. Over the years, she worked at festivals and Breathe-Read-Write-sessions; she is now curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review and runs linguistic-poetry workshops for the IWWG this year. Kate was born @ harbour city and adores housesitting at the world. https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ ** Memories of a Niagara Falls Morning, 1856 White. Cold. My first noticing was the dense mist. Not tendrils curling around like fingers but thick like a blanket, moisture-rich, like being inside a cloud. It would burn off later as the sun climbed in the sky. I needed there to be good visibility for the crowd. Next, as always, I noticed the noise. A pleasant natural cacophony at a distance, it became a pounding, rushing freight train as I walked towards The Spot. We'd scouted it weeks before, using word-of-mouth and triangulating with newspaper reports from a few years back. The crushing sound, the energy of the spray - it really made me feel alive. My good friend Itzak was already waiting, well wrapped up in his long greatcoat with the collar turned up, thick padded leather gloves, his long mutton chop sideburns slick with the water vapour and his dark curls were straggling from under his peaked cap. Itzak's lips curled into a smile at my approach and he had that devilish twinkle in his eye confirming why he was the only person I could have trusted to help me with this caper. If - no, when - I made it to the bottom of the Falls I'd be famous. No-one else had ever managed the journey and survived, and certainly no woman, though truth be told very few had tried, and even then not voluntarily. The last poor fellows had fallen, one almost rescued then pulled under by the cruel currents. My journey would be sensational in a different way. The reporter would be here soon, as would the usual troupes of tourists, as soon as the dense fog lifted to unveil the splendour of the Falls. "Who's that? Is he the man from The Gazette?" I asked Itzak, pointing to a tall stranger. He looked old, probably as much as thirty. The man nodded in our direction but seemed preoccupied as he turned to look at the water cascading over the edge. "Him? That's Frederic. I spoke with him yesterday afternoon. He's some sort of artist, sketching the Falls. You know how popular it is for postcards and pasting onto tourist tat." "He's not drawing us, is he?" I was suspicious of the detached, aloof stranger. "No, no worries there." Itzak flashed me another smile. "He told me he's only interested in the Romantic Ideal of nature. He won't even paint what he sees, but only the best version of it, he said." "Hah! Perhaps he'll have a new romantic ideal in mind later!" Itzak smiled again and stepped to the side to reveal the barrel. It was large, dark, heavy - befitting the seriousness of its purpose. Painted on the side in large white letters was "Bella D'Angelo, Niagara Falls, 1856". Inside, it was packed with soft, cream, newly spun wool. My playful mind suggested that it would be just like climbing into the clouds themselves, although thankfully drier. "Are you sure you'll have enough room in there?" "We've tested it out, Itzak. There's enough room for me to snuggle down, for you to add the last soft pillow of wool on top and bolt on the lid. As long as Bertrand is ready with the boat at the bottom all will be well." "Ah, here's the reporter now. Let me help you in and you can talk to him from there before you nestle down. That will make it more dramatic." And that's where it all went awry. It was a combination of the slippery rock under Itzak's foot as he helped me, the proximity of the barrel to the edge - after all The Spot was the perfect launch place for a reason, that reason being ease of falling – and the power of gravity sucking at the weight of the barrel with me half in it. I'll give The Gazette reporter his due. As obituaries go, it was nicely written. I'd get the fame I wanted but not quite in the way I desired. Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in Willows Wept Review, The Ekphrastic Review and elsewhere online, and in print in some publications by Dreich with other work forthcoming elsewhere. She lives in the UK. ** Niagara November 1978 After Thanksgiving dinner in North Tonawanda We drove to Niagara through chilly evening fog, parked and walked carefully toward the falls. The sidewalks and grounds were frosted lace, along the path branches of flash frozen trees had spent blossoms suspended like icicle earrings. Although we remembered 4th grade science and the hydraulic water cycle we forgot to realize that when they melt the radiant ice diamonds will mingle with human breath mist their way to heaven before returning to earth in never ending rotation to churn and crash over the falls as they had for Frederic Edwin Church in 1857 when his breath and artistic vision captured and contributed to the movement of the eternal roar. Daniel Brown Daniel Brown has recently published at age 72 his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician and Chronogram Magazineand was included in Arts Mid-Hudson 2023 gallery presentation Poets Respond To Art in Poughkeepsie, NY. ** Hearing the World Differently The gallery lies in silence. Clusters of faces pause canvas to canvas lips miming words, the unheard musings of the many. I inhale their movement, jackets and backpacks jostle the canvas to my right the vertical drop of Niagara Falls drawing us into its power. The tide turns. My eyes conjure sounds only I can hear, decibels of cyan and teal the roar of acrylic licking the frame. I taste the grit of salt on teeth, sea-spray fresh on my face. Violet tones colour my mood, the distinctive tang of oil on wood. I open my senses, hear it all. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar and ukulele. 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 pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published in the next month. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Uncertainty Dichotomy of light and shade rainbow blurred in cloud and rain white suicidal water tangible tears of spray rocks of despair, eddies of grief days of uncertainty and loss Still the blue face of control cascades of courage and resolution accepting the crags of destruction the far horizon of the past tethered on the edge of memory Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher living near Cambridge, UK who has taught in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in over 12 countries including US, UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Croatia and Romania ** Hear Me Roar The roar of Niagara Falls, while eluding sound, doesn’t fail to irradiate sight with its jazzy waves and frothy strokes of jade — these sweeping illusions, swallowed whole by the Deep, howl against deafening winds, westward and warbling — veiling the fading sunlight holding Hope hostage -- as renegade avalanches are welcomed by a deluge of stratus tears wailing louder than the Sky itself — the gaze lustily cascades over escarpments of towering cliffs while the river’s limbs engulf the clamoring boulders — dark talons of the night threaten to eviscerate the roaring cacophony of discord with the manifestation of gloom alone— if the eyes can imagine the jaded purging into the Deep, can that which does not roar still be Heard? Ann Marie Steele Ann Marie Steele, who resides in Charlotte, NC, America, is a writer who dabs in poetry, essays, and short stories. She holds a BS in Journalism (News-Editorial), and an MA in Secondary English Education. Ann Marie pens pieces about love and loss, and what she observes and experiences. The loss of her youngest son, Brandon, has influenced much of her writing. Her poetry has been described as “resiliently defiant.” Ann Marie has been published in The Ekphrastic Review with her pieces, “Every Lilly Donned with Grief” and “I Dare You, Pretty Please.” When not teaching high school English, Ann Marie enjoys partner acrobatics, where she can often be seen flying upside down. ** Looking at Church’s Niagara Falls on the Web Niagara is a revelation of the cosmos to each and every man. David C. Huntington Sure, I’ll breathe poetry there. My mind will be an embouchure through which your powerful waters pour thunder. I will hear nothing else, not the sharp sound waves spearing my bellows, nor honeymooners whose croons you swallow into white foam and spew out as a shimmering arch of rainbow. You’ll teach me about the cosmos by proving the paradox of water in motion: that its motion is a stillness, that its stillness is ever in motion. My body will be a speck of silence swallowed by your howling emerald olivine chrysoberyl pale blue ice snowy pinnacles, your ten-thousand-year-old ceaselessly cataracting avalanche, your constant breath ever billowing through one diapason, yet not one prism in your mist ever splits light the same way. Like that bared jagged root snagged on your brink, I’d abide inside your relentless remaking. Eyes on a digital or hands on a canvas covered with smooth strokes would never equal the whole of me, mind, body, heart and soul, all immersed in the whole of your eloquence greater even than my whole world, you patient shale-shaper, finale of the Niagara River, you Ice Age’s fossil water, you rhapsody of ancient glaciers ever burgeoning into new birth, you under whose arcades lovers sport crowned with bright sprays, you whose sheer impetus splashes the sun’s and moon’s incandescent faces, I keep calling you Whirlpool, Horseshoe, Luna Falls, Iris Falls and you chant to purple clouds a booming Gravity is Grace. Lucie Chou Lucie Chou is an ecopoet working in mainland China. Currently an undergraduate majoring in English language and literature, she is also interested in the ecotone between ekphrasis and ecopoetics, and in exploring the magic presences of other-than-human living beings bleeding into the lonely arrogance of human experience. Her work has appeared in the Entropy magazine, the Black Earth Institute Blog, the Tiny Seed Journal website, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, and in the Plant Your Words Anthology published by Tiny Seed Press. A poem is forthcoming in from Tofu Ink Arts, both in print and online. She has published a debut collection of ecopoetry, Convivial Communiverse, with Atmosphere Press. She hikes, gardens, and studies works of natural history by Victorian writers with gusto. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30 / 30 project where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month. She writes for a constellation of brilliant readers hopefully including street trees and feral animals she encounters in each city she travels to. ** Vantage Point Strands of darkening tangerine twilight tantalizes an Ontario skyline near Horseshoe Falls sending frothy waves, sheets of water cascading over rocky outcroppings into the Niagara River, as we stand on the observation deck at Skylon Tower mesmerized by its sheer force hours before moonlight casts its glow on a dark June evening sky, before we whisper under the stars. Dr. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Nameless Roads (2019) and Driving Long Distance (forthcoming 2024). 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), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** Leaping The first time it happened was on a family holiday when the parents piled the four of us into the back seat of our wood-panelled Plymouth station wagon, circa 1959. Dan 10 moi 9 Deb 5 Dave 4 I hear ya, the 4 Ds, what were they thinking? We piled in, we were piled on, we were on a camping trip from Ottawa to see the falls, the mythical falls! A long day journey with moi pleading car sickness so I could sit up front and not stay squished in the back with the squabblers. I know, you're wondering how can 4 kids be packed into the back seat of a station wagon: no problem: this trip was 20 years prior to that belt legislation. Plus, we had Heidi with us, a usually sweet dachshund, but cranky car companion. What were they thinking? Am writing this in the throes of slouching towards 75, can't remember anything much about the actual road trip. But we must've played horses and cemeteries. You get points for horses you see in the fields and you lose all your points if someone yells 'cemetery'. This requires lots of I saw it first. But I do remember the awestruckness of seeing the falls, feeling the mist, the magnetism of the cataract, the thunderous roar, the trembling...and the irresistible desire, more the irresistible need, to leap. To be one with the shoots, the flumes, the brume.... Even today, with small cascades, like Hogsback Falls on the Rideau River in Ottawa, I want to leap. Anyone out there feel the same tug? Perhaps Annie Edson Taylor did when she first saw Niagara Falls. To design and build a barrel, at age 63, and throw herself into the river and over the falls! We're talking a drop of 160 feet, a flow rate of 85,000 cubic feet per second! Though she was the first person to survive this remarkable feat, she was not the risk taker you might take her for: she sent her cat over the precipice a few days earlier, and he survived. You? Would you go over Niagara Falls for fame and fortune? Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith resides in Montreal, Canada and has a hankering to leap.  Untitled, reverse glass painting, Qing Dynasty (China) c. 1800s Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Untitled, by unknown artist of the Qing Dynasty. Deadline is October 27, 2023. 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 ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. 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 QING DYNASTY 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 27, 2023. 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.  Page from Grimoires Illuminees, by Pierre Richard (France) before 1879 Alarum When I reread my book of spells, it hearkens straight to gods themselves who sit up and take careful note and seek to whom I fast devote this cunning magic’s potent brew and why this sudden cry and hue when sleeping secrets lie for ages undisturbed by fits and rages… Why this one enchanted nostrum, bound to make one’s courage blossom un-affrighted, wrath untethered, world warrior from humble shepherd turned capable of winning battle ‘gainst spirits, demons, raging cattle, fast with sword, and spry of foot, changing worlds where drops are put whether ‘neath a tongue or poured in ear this potion births a hellish fear. It rocks the planet pole to pole. And elder toverdoks will know because the past is prologue for what new wars wage, what fires roar, what madness shall now come to reign, what lessons shan’t be learned again. Truth be known, the draught’s for me, unhappy with what’s come to be, so tired of this weary strife of petty toils that entail a life. I seek destruction as solution: a nihilistic revolution. To make disparate fields all level the best angel becomes a devil. Gary Glauber Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He has five collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit), A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing) and most recently, Inside Outrage (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), a Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur finalist. He also has two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize. ** Asylum Even here behind locked doors and high walls meant to keep the world safe from my wild contagion, I can see the angels burning like witchfire in the winter-bare trees. Even in my desperate confinement, they come in choirs, in regiments, tongues flashing sharp as swords, brighter than the sun. They sing the numbers of my bones, promise power and salvation, escape from this shadow world where I crouch, vexed by grinning demons rising thick as smoke, tormenting me with jabs and pinches, nightmares chasing me down at every turn, reciting my sins so loud it drowns the angels song, pushing me into the last dark corner of these narrow halls, where I have no remedy, where no one listens, and I can only write it all down, glory and terror in the pages of my own magical bible, a Grimoire of prayers and spells in black ink figures pinned down and crowding the arcane marks of my litanies. psalms and parables powerful enough to make the devils blush and buy me some small respite from their mad unending torments. Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, the Blue Heron Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible will come out from Kelsay early next year. ** Saint du Paradi Puritans and pandits, Parisian nudists strip, rid satin. Unpaid audits strain. Drains spirit in drips. Spirit spits rants. Asp in an urn, Isis snips – disrupts. Standup, upstand, What does it mean to be a man? Ruby Siegel Ruby Siegel is a second-year student at a women's college in Columbia, Missouri. She is a member of the Stephens College chapter of the Sigma Tau Delta English honour society and the staff of the acclaimed student-run Harbinger Literary Journal. ** Pistol Cocked Now you see it, now you don’t, odd pages, scattered leaves, The Fall, a paradisal loss before, cast spell-book here not lexicon, or primer, abecedary, but abracadabra as cabal. Claiming benefit of age this syncretistic patchwork quilt, symbols - sign of codes at work, for esoteric, in the know; tried toxic mix in undertow, a gnostic few tossed in the hue and cry for burning, which at stake but jottings, crowded, more provoked. See glyphs join graphs in saturate, asylum more in raw art script than institute for lunatics. But manic, more researchers’ work; fervour disputes delirium, psalmody, glossolalia, a solipsistic zealotry, cross rooster perched with pistol cocked. Vicissitudes of Lorraine space, where Magic, Revolution, Church, and chanted prayers not understood, by ritornelles, homophonies, compete to claim the paranoid, a wettersegen in the storm. Illuminated manuscript which it both is, but ’ting is not. 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 by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** The Magic Did Not Bring Her Back My Leah is gone. The magic did not bring her back. I desperately explored the passages, holding open the grimoire next to her while repeating the supplications. I incanted the liturgy as grief welled up inside. I sang the exhortations banishing the demonic from its imprisonment of her soul. I followed each instruction closely, and I wept. I fought in fury to revive her pallid form and there was no response. I spread the ochre as the text instructed, applied the resinous balsam in my anguish, the ancient balm from the terebinth of Gilead, tendered me through the merchants of Tyre. She lay still. I struggled in agony to command the forces of nature that had wrenched her from my life. Thomas of Chobham tells us that these forces are constrained threefold by sacred words, by healing herbs, and by magic stones. But I tried these, all, and Leah did not rise. The Apostle Mark tells us that invocation by touch is key: They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. I bathed her lifeless body in anointing oil. I cleansed her with rosewater to drive out the smell of death. I touched her pale lips with mine but found no warmth there, and Leah remained unmoved. Finally, and with effort, they pried her from my arms and wrapped her in the winding sheet of death. There was no entry through it for her soul’s return. They lowered her in reverence, into the pit of darkness, and my faith followed. I now tend Leah’s grave, scattering the roses she adored, showering the fragrances she prized. I speak to her of what we had. My tears keep moist the soil above her, and my heart laments its solitary beat, no longer harmonized with hers. Perhaps one day I will recover--but know this well: the grimoire failed. The magic did not bring her back. Ron Wetherington Ron Wetherington is a retired anthropologist living in Dallas, Texas. He has a published novel, non-fiction in The Dillydoun Review, Literary Yard, and The Ekphrastic Review, and short fiction in Words & Whispers, Adanna, and in Flash Fiction Magazine. ** mercy, blue angels don't cross that hexed picket line! the mighty blue angels are on strike doctors guard the entry to hospitals steadfast burns their righteous anger scalpels are swapped with placards appointment notes switched for banners gowned in-patients wait behind them ghostly smiles play on their wan faces and in the distant ivory towers of Whitehall what Grimoire holds the key to the deadlock? Emily Tee [Author's Note: Written on 19 September 2023, the first day ever that both hospital consultants and junior doctors held a simultaneous strike over pay in England, withdrawing their services except for emergency cases and basic ward cover. Further days of action are planned. Whitehall represents the seat of British Government.] Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's had recent pieces published in Willows Wept Review, The Ekphrastic Review and elsewhere online, and in print in some publications by Dreich, with more work forthcoming elsewhere. She lives in the UK. ** The White Owl Tell the one about the owl as a choir of angels, side by side, their wings as white as any snow squall. I can trace the alphabetical harbingers, I’ll know the songs as if born to the symbols, as if Jesus Christ could raise me from where I fell, over and over. No saint, I could never carry a tune, yet when the pages opened, caught me cruising interstate 84/285, trying to make home before the sun set and the snow began to fly. Hear me singing all the words, pretending I’m Grace Slick, or Annie Lennox, “Sweet Dreams,” calling on the saints, or believing I can become one on this road, when God creates the tunnel of snow, flakes that travel like stars, as if I am hurling myself through the Milky Way, headed for heaven, chanting because all the symbols have become magic in my mouth, the dream one of not dying, my world a loud chorus of hallelujahs, as the curve of invocations rides on the wings of angels, and the white owl, no lie, flew wide winged, and led me home. Michelle Holland Michelle Holland lives and writes in Chimayo, NM. She is currently the Poet-in-Residence for the Santa Fe Girls School and the treasurer of NM Literary Arts. Her poems can be found in literary journals, in print and on the internet, as well as in a few anthologies. She has two book-length collections of poetry, Chaos Theory, Sin Fronteras Press, and The Sound a Raven Makes, Tres Chicas Press. ** Beyond the Sea The aether outstretches like parted hands of Christ, A hole in the sky of which divinity spliced. Fever world spin upon the axis degree, A withered white sun rises for a chosen three. Consider a pledge. Beyond the sea. Across cerulean desert and amidst salted air, The thaumaturge emerges bearing earthenware. Magic smoke rises obscuring turbid, lurking clouds, From incense censer’s foretelling demises and shrouds. Miracleworker born of shared red flesh, Sought forth lapis stone in place of success. Such visceral transmutations of cabalistic rites, Indulge runes, incantations and forbidden sights. The ladder to abyss reaches not the welkin, Ancient citadel fell upon knell whims. Thamuaturge stranger beckons the foolish and fair, Voici un vrai dieu remplaçant, mon frère. Malachite daggers, a comet’s bleak storm, Uphold your savior, mimic cruciform. Take the magician’s hand and be led afar, Beyond insect-bitten roots and moral abbatoirs. Angels plagued sick without Lord to call to, The theurgist who tricks and surrogate consume. Partake in discordant charms, partake a profane potion, Know now we are the sprogs of a since forgotten ocean. The husk of the Father calls forth the obscene, And the insidious Rex begs: Consider all a pledge to the ultramarine. Gehenna endured. Beyond the sea. Baylee Bleu ** Angels Descend The rising sun in holy sin, The lord has come. Bodies of ice, Blood undone, Angels call The time has come. In feathered skies, With silvered lies, Angels call Come with me, Children now– Your sun has set. Julie Wiley Julie Wiley is a senior English Major attending Stephens College. ** Evangelist It’s the Sunday morning in which Pierre Richard, a crazy and depressed French farmer (with whom, nevertheless, God likes to talk), begins to write. What did God, or Dieu, say to the French peasant? Did He talk to him about the upcoming Twentieth Century, and about a second millennium? That is the century of Arcadia, when intellectuals loved to tell people that life in the countryside is blissful idleness. Pierre Richard takes his grimoire, goes out on the balcony, and looks out over the countryside. He asks and, therefore, receives. The whole countryside is full of saints and angels like clouds of mosquitoes, a fleet of mosquitoes trying to land. The pages come towards him from the distance, and take the place of his eyes. He writes what he sees, but he doesn't see what he writes. Is he, Pierre Richard, the fifth evangelist? The evangelist Pierre Richard writes seriously, with a sense of duty about his encounter with glorious aliens. After he is returned to his Lorraine, he can’t stop drawing and thinking about their blue auras, not just halos – all the blue in the world. They have eyes so blue, that the blue is all around them. Like flames, as if they were surrounded by sky. Pierre Richard would like to join his hands in prayer, but he cups them and drinks everything. Angelo 'NGE' Colella Angelo 'NGE' Colella lives in Italy, where he writes poetry and prose in Italian and English, makes analog collages, asemic writings and DADA objects. ** Grimoire- Habi mas a denli fantien Great dark spirit hear my plea, bring forth my Request for power, most strong, call on all Immortal souls, I beseech thee, oh Master of blackest night, oh dark one, supreme Overlord – call on me your most loyal servant I do your bidding without pause, I draw upon your Reverence to slay those who oppose your greatness, Enemies of the night, unite in the quest! Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson writes poetry from prompts such as memories and nature, but especially enjoys Ephrastic writing. Her interests include books and music, she advocates for captive elephants and feral cats. Dickson holds a degree in Behavioral Science, has been a guest editor, served on two poetry boards and her work appears in over 65 journals, including Lorlorien, Blue Heron Review and The Ekphrastic Review. ** How to Slay a Demon Use singing bowls in the morning to lure it out from whence it hides. For they are ninjas at stealing in where they’re not wanted. Let it approach curiously. You’ll know it’s nearby as the wheeee sound of the sonorous bowl will change pitch slightly. Then capture it within and put a lid on it. Without further ado, place it in a sunspot somewhere on the patio all afternoon and smile as it shrivels. If you don’t have a patio, any sunspot will do. How they hate the sun. They like fire, sure, but not that type of fire. It’s too holy, too wholesome. Try and discover its name. Ask for the universe to show you a sign. Bear in mind it may be unpronounceable. Whisper it thrice whilst turning widdershins on the night of the full harvest supermoon and you’re home free. Cackle maniacally at anything you find funny. This will irritate the hell out of it. Burn some sage in the morning to bless your dwelling. The cliché is true. Demons hate the stuff. They’ll definitely leave the room. Better yet, smoke some in a joint to be internally as well as externally protected. Drape your pet python around you for protection as you go about your business (perhaps not when you pop to the shops). It approves of reptiles and will look at you in a new light and wonder whether you’re a demon from another realm and not actually a trickster. Either way, it will keep its distance for it is wary, nay, respectful of serpents. If you don’t have a python, not to worry, you can skip this step. Now, they are stubborn to oust for they insist on returning again and again until they get what they want - which is generally all-round destruction in one form or another as it’s the only entertainment they get what with being damned and all - so you have to remain one step ahead at all times and never slack on your demon-slaying routine. As a last resort, call upon the Archangels, the house sprites and the faeries of the garden and bid them cast their gaze upon the feral underling and evict it from your house. That will make it think twice about hanging around. It may end up loitering in the garden however, which could make the faeries think twice about lending a hand. Be as boring as possible. Perhaps spend all day reading books and doing nothing remarkable or noteworthy. Have no parties, watch no TV, spend all day in bed, paint your toenails, have a face mask, then lounge around reading yet more books. It will find you so tedious and dreary it will leave of its own accord. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani artist, poet and general creative bod based in Birmingham, UK. She's had work published in various journals, including Ink Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Unlost Journal, Messy Misfits Club, Harana Poetry and Visual Verse among others. When she's not teaching, she's making art or poems. Other than that, she is never not reading. You can find her on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and Twitter: @NusraNazir ** The Year I Went Without Being Saved I shall have come alone. Or not at all. And then I shall say. Let me stay on this chair, Lord. Here in the anonymous dark. For even the light switch is a reach. Is more versed in Your poor servant’s repertoire. And so, let me speak Your name. And the name of all Your associates. Deep inside of my mouth. In that cave of a thousand nights. Where I’ll have dreamt only of sleeping. And in that breath I’ll have held. Till it was the death of me. That haunted house I’ll have shared with not one ghost. Who thought of themselves as a ghost. Or not having a story to tell. O Lord, how a second word gives us a sword. And a third, something closer to You. And the wars you inspire. But then to write it is not. Worth it or the trouble. Mark DeCarteret Mark DeCarteret's work has appeared in 500 literary reviews. ** Hidden Prophecies A magic tome of symbols and spells, Unknown still in intent and meaning, Of writings within, only one foretells. Figures of green jointly compels Letters to words, together convening A magic tome of symbols and spells. Images of blue hides and propels Cabalistic clues weaving, intervening Of writings within, only one foretells. Birds, swords, heads repels Unwanted eyes from gleaning A magic tome of symbols and spells. Hidden messages in fading pastels, Detailing prophecies in brown, demeaning Of writings within, only one foretells. A masterpiece to see for all it tells, One day, of a reconvening. A magic tome of symbols and spells, Of writings within, only one foretells. Katie Davey Katie Davey is an aspiring author from the rural parts of House Springs, MO. She has worked on Harbinger Magazine as a staff intern. She plans to become a member of Stephens College’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta in Fall 2023. She will earn her BFA in Creative Writing, with minors in Equestrian Studies and Psychology, at Stephens College in May 2024. ** Before Camelot Beyond the dyke, dipping low my indigo clan— scrolling whorls and charms—wait Wait until tarnished knights stumble through the barbs They throng atop our steepled hill beating harmonies of death to ring around the stones Our hoary tongues tut curses that shift ravens from their crags and loose them as the whistley flight of arrows But still the hooved up Roman clods trample down and even crusty Merlin cannot draw the bloody gutter away from our green-bladed valley After all those that dwelt in the forbidden places filled now with chanting men pretending to be God die slowly their fingers out of place—red at the bone telling tales they did not know before I am swift—it has always been my thread to grace but even I cannot outpace the mist whispering at my heel So shrouded in the smoky breath of dragons I hurl Caliburn to crest the setting sun Its bloody pedigree bright and gone Pulled deeply down into the blue-lit world And seen only by the Lady waiting patiently in the lake for another to arrive Adele Evershed Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Asia before settling in Connecticut. Her work has been published in over a hundred journals and anthologies such as Every Day Fiction, Grey Sparrow Journal, Reflex Fiction, Shot Glass Journal, and A470, Poems for the Road from Arachne Press. Adele has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for poetry. Finishing Line Press published her poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places this year and her novella-in-flash, Wannabe, was published by Alien Buddha Press in May. Her second poetry collection, The Brink of Silence will be available from Bottlecap Press later this year. ** Untitled scribble scribble scribble. He is watching me. it must be right it must be holy it must be perfect. i am a scribe for the Lord and it must be perfect. Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews. one in the corner another in the middle. an angel here a demon there. He can see me. i’m doing everything i’m supposed to. i’m following His word. sigil sigil sigil one after the other. forgive me Father, for i have sinned but i’m doing my best i swear to you, Lord, i’m doing my best. River Louraine ** Philology Stanley the Cockroach, astral etymologist and subjective violator of many a scholarly work of biographical entomology, devotee of the Shrine of Libation to the Arcane Sigil, cloaked in mystique but bereft of the vanishing banknotes of Banksy, arrived at Singapore Airport after eight hours infesting an airline catering cube. Industrious vermin were paid no penalties. When there was a job to do, Stanley was no slacker. In defiance of a union ban on luxury travel, he jumped quickly onto a trolley bound for Helsinki, premium economy. Stanley took his fill of pre-packaged butter chicken. After twelve hours travail, when the head steward threatened to dip him in chocolate and serve him as petit four in place of sultanas, he took advantage of the sick leave provisions of his industrial award, pleading a gastroenterological emergency. His sole intention being rest and recreation, he rode in a taxi to a hotel at Ullanlinna, where the restful aspect of his lustful ambition was frustrated by a four o’clock check-in. Stanley waited, in this city where life starts later. When, at eleven, the Design Museum opened, he crawled across the threshold and skittered down the stairwell to playfully relieve himself across walls of graffiti that philologists were destined to misread, for several centuries, as modern Sumerian cuneiform. When, at last, his room was ready, he ran around foolishly, soiled the linen curtains, cavorted with the bed bugs—an afternoon of fun, finished by sharing the butt end of a smoking hot roach. Back at the museum, those philologists worked conscientiously on a theory of relationship of languages, linking the literature of ancient Mesopotamia with the damage done by silverfish to first edition Finnish print runs of the Kalevela. Among the reference sources attributed as seminal to this semiotic dreamwork was a hieroglyphic tableaux drawn by the nineteenth century alchemist, the Master of Moselle, whose grimoires turned up recently in an antiquarian bookstore in Metz. Stanley’s myriad offspring celebrate his naming day, in solemn memoriam of the time their ancestor revolutionised philology, the day he doodled all over the walls of the Design Museum. Andrew Leggett Andrew Leggett is an Australian author and editor of poetry, fiction, interdisciplinary papers and songs. His work has placed or been shortlisted in various literary awards including the Joanne Burns Microlit Award, the Bridport International Poetry Prize, the Australian Catholic University Poetry Prize, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award, the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Award and the IP Picks National Poetry Manuscript Prize. His latest collection of poetry Losing Touch was published by Ginninderra Press in 2022. In addition to medical degrees and postgraduate qualifications in psychiatry and psychotherapy, he holds a research masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland and a PhD in Creative Writing from Griffith University. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor with the James Cook University College of Medicine and Dentistry. He was editor of the Australasian Journal of Psychotherapy from 2006-2011 and prose editor of StylusLit from 2017-2022. ** how the king dances tonight stand on your throne, wretched beast, fur coat kissing the soil-stained floor. gurgle bloodied delight, teeth crimson-coppery and, we the peasants crawl in on raw knees, backs hunched with horror sing! folk, sing for your king, howl anger into symphony. how the earth rears her head, you ride her emotion, sobbing laughter through clenched jaws, pained, teeth clicking together and, strike the poppy tiles with your staff, cry! king, cry for the people from which you hung souls onto hooks and, tonight you step down take a peasant girl by the hands and, dance! monster, dance, face touching hers, and your eyes blaze concealed guilt. laugh! wretched beast, laugh the horror into cruelty, and the peasant girl screams into your shoulder: how the moonlight stares, silent, down upon a cursed dance. Aisha Al-Tarawneh Aisha Al-Tarawneh is a nineteen-year-old from Denmark and Jordan. Some of her favourite writers and poets include Vladimir Mayakovski and Nikolai Gogol. She enjoys watching KHL hockey and practicing recurve archery, as well as kickboxing in her spare time. ** To the Golden Son An Alchemist sits at his table, jars and glasses surround Lapis lazuli paint etches the pages, thoughts and theories abound. Quod natura relinquit imperfectum, ars perficit The person searching for potions That are most arcane. Gold for the purest souls and lead the person’s bane. Quod natura relinquit imperfectum, ars perficit Searching through the obscure, searching for something of substance. Refining matter to reach perfected amounted conductance. Quod natura relinquit imperfectum, ars perficit Hoping to reach Jesus Christ and his four Holy Gospels, Following the teachings of His many heavenly apostles. Quod natura relinquit imperfectum, ars perficit Documenting his research written in gallnut inklings, Searching through the angelic properties that are slowly dwindling. Quod natura relinquit imperfectum, ars perficit The Alchemist diligently works to stand beside the Son. To work towards the Philosopher’s Stone that hundreds of minds have spun. Quod natura relinquit imperfectum, ars perficit Mads Christiansen Mads Christiansen (any and all pronouns) is an author/illustrator from the suburbs of Chicago, IL. They are a member of Sigma Tau Delta in Stephens College. Currently, they are working towards finishing their English Bachelor's in May 2024 and plan to do their Master’s next in Library and Information Sciences. ** The Garden She had a vision—that’s what she told them, after. The ones who remained. In it, God promised that they were chosen to make a new world, an Eden. But she lied. There was no vision: no choir of singing angels, no holy fire lighting up a bush, no cinder that burnt her lips with the truth. Instead, there was a chicken. It stopped producing eggs, and so she wrung its neck like her mother taught her, and fried it up. She didn’t know what to do with the beak and the feet; it made her too sad to dump it like trash. She buried the beak, the feet, and the bones near a rose bush. It seemed a peaceful place to rest. A week later, a bulbous, baby head sprouted like a cabbage patch doll where the chicken bones lay. She should have drowned it in gasoline and burnt it to ashes. Was it guilt that stopped her? Or was it because it looked vaguely human—chubby cheeks, but green skin; brown eyes, but no irises. She found herself treating it like a stray kitten: she gave it water, fed it bits of the leftover chicken with her fingers, and scolded it when it bit her and drew blood. She brought out an umbrella to shade it from the sun, blankets to warm it by night. She sang lullabies for it to sleep, read Green Eggs and Ham over and over again, interpreting its quivering leaves as laughter. When it grew vines and scarlet flowers that smelled of sulfur and smothered her flower beds and veggie patch—she called its jealousy over zucchini and roses adorable. When the HOA fined her $500 for the unruly weeds, she laughed at their snottiness and threw away every other warning without reading it. In late Summer, the flowers died, leaving large husks in their place. The vines strangled her mailbox, creeped in the cracks of her windows and door frame, laid roots in her sink. Shoulder’s appeared, then a stomach, and webbed, finger-like leaves. The epidermis resembled that of a sunflower–dark green with a fuzz of prickles that snagged her shoe laces, her clothing, the ends of her hair. She started carrying around a pair of scissors, cutting off whatever got caught, be it fabric or hair. Her friends asked questions: had she heard from her ex recently? Was her boss acting like an ass again after the whole HR drama? Was she involved in any cult? No to the ex—fortunately. Yes to the asshat boss—unfortunately. And come on, a buzz cut is so anti-cult, she protested. The next door neighbor’s fourteen year old chihuahua disappeared around Halloween. By this time, the pseudo-sunflower stood like a scarecrow on two thick, leg-like stems. The bizarre head remained, wreathed by yellow petals, but stoic. Blank. It obliged her by letting her drape faux spider web over it. The husks had molted, revealing brown beady eyes and chubby cheeked baby heads. She spread a black tarp over them–to keep you warm, she explained—and dressed the tarp like a graveyard. The neighbors’ teenage kid knocked on her door, asking about the dog. She listened, then told her theory (coyotes). But when the kid stumbled into one of the obscured baby heads, she held her breath, waiting. The sunflower bent its head, a vine-y arm outstretched—and then the kid ran off, unaware of the danger. She knew then where the chihuahua went. It went where her chickens had gone. Where the zucchini and roses and her own hair had gone. She should have done something then, rather than stand and smile blandly at the creature towering over her. In December the not-so-new plants burst from the black tarp—head, shoulders, stomach, feet. She binged Hallmark movies, eating take out (she gave up cooking in the kitchen once the vines snaked from the sink, into the fridge). Hearing leaves rustling, she cranked the volume, telling herself that they wanted to watch the cheesy movies with her. When she left for work, she noticed that they were forming fake pine trees, winding leaves and vines around the youngest growths. They accepted the strings of twinkle lights she offered, but when she added a blow up Santa in the center—they popped it. A vine stabbed through its cheerful head. And when the first snow came, coating all of the growth in ice and white, it filled in the gaps between vines, petals, and leaves transforming them into something more substantial. The oldest of them, her nameless friend, appeared to have wings. She started daydreaming it was an angel, a divine bringer of justice. Somehow, it would make everything okay again. The boss who grabbed her breast “as a joke” would be fired and blacklisted. The ex who took the TV, the last roll of toilet paper, and her favorite fuzzy blanket, but left his dirty dishes on the counter when he moved out—would wreck his precious motorcycle. The annoying HOA president who called her every day at 6:45pm, threatening to sue her for negligence—would come home to find it burned to the ground. She came home that night. The fresh snow sparkled under the headlights of her car like the most delicious answer. She grabbed the leafy hand of the fake angel, ignoring how her skin burned from the millions of burs in its skin, and met its gaze for the first time. The truth—the ugly pointy reckoning—she destroyed the world. No vision prompted her, no demon or angel. It was just a question. She cultivated it for months, feeding and coaxing the decay until it was ripe with hunger. She only had to ask. Annalee Simonds Annalee Simonds writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review's Challenge series. This year she has read The Crucible five times in a row with her students and can't stop quoting it. When she's not teaching or writing, she dabbles with watercolour. She lives in Utah. ** Magic Magic is illusion we enjoy willingly suspending disbelief. Demons are diversions we deploy damning them as curse and cause of grief believed because of all that we deny, for which in worthy measure we're to blame, becoming random risk that we defy and innocence we falsely dare to claim is yoked to faith from which we've turned away that, glistening with envy's emerald green, we vainly see as augury of sway still there by incantation we can glean invoking without penance precious Grace dispensed as if by magic we embrace. Portly Bard Old man. Ekphrastic fan. 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. ** Blue Bowl "Some sorcerers do boast to have a Rod, Gather'd with Vowes and Sacrifice, And (borne about) will strangely nod To hidden Treasure where it lies..." Vingula devine "Kiss the day goodbye And point me toward tomorrow -- Can't forget, won't regret What I did for love... what I did for love." Marvin Hamlisch/Edward Lawrence Kleban What I Did For Love "In the blue eye of the medievalist there is a cart in the road..." Another November, Stanley Plumly I watched my daughter's fingers shape the earthen clay into a soup-plate, a shallow void in its center to hold the rain; shadows mingling in the water to prognosticate a pattern, why gypsy-lovers can't come back to cast their spell, telling fortunes in a tinker's wagon filled with tarnished silver. Aya is The apple of God's eye -- what I could never be -- my gift the tragedy of poverty born, as I was, into a time before I could know a divining rod is shaped like a sling-shot, a "Y"; how it sends a stone to skip 4 times across the pond beneath the Ash tree where Aya sits and reads of passion and success, magic secrets of The Grimoire Illuminee; why she will choose blue glaze azure as the sky, with v-shaped instructions on the manuscript page; and blue as the sea beneath a fat, full moon, a dotted "I" (God's Eye) over the turbulent ocean. We had no books in a sorry beginning, and no boats only our dreams, and magic that would lead me to this brilliant, fearsome night, illuminee where you would say I was to be your history, how we would wake to the call of the weathervane cock as nature funneled knowledge in the earth's vibrations -- La radiesthesie sourcier -- the children warned again not to swim in ground water; to wait (O God, spare the rod!) as prophecy promises gemstones and gravesites; forty-seven tones in Indian music; an angel with sword and lyre, and nine women floating through the spheres wearing hennis -- capriotes -- cone hats their metaphorical megaphone to hear the stars and the messages encoded in my daughter's plate -- Aya's scry bowl, rainfall itself a kind of divination tomorrow waiting in a dusty corner -- bless'd art thou in the future's workshop. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp's book, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020, explores the surreality of life itself as did the ancient "grimoires" used by magicians. At a time in history when Christianity was at a crossroads with old world magic and the tenets of religion, all forms of "magic" --necromancy, fortune telling, divining rods, scry bowl readings and Tarot cards -- were taboo in church doctrine. A study of Hindu mythology and old Irish language used in early legends required the poet's use of the Sanskrit Dictionary (a formidable task!) which revealed the multiple meanings of words such as Aya, used in "Blue Bowl." It is a feminine name meaning "wonderful, amazing, a miracle" with an underlying meaning of the strength of the goddess, forty-seven tones of Indian music, the ancient Indian science of the creative arts, AE as a letter in the Old English alphabet, the number 4, and the ash tree (like a blue tree trunk or spinal column on the page of Pierre Richard's Grimoire.) The capriote (cone hat) indicates the penitent's attempt through penance to get closer to God. It is remarkable for the complexity of meaning on Pierre Richard's page that it resembles a child's drawing. which seems to make the picture an example of primitivism, art naif, a magic "how to" to explain the artist's inner being. |
Challenges
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