 Cycles, by Norval Morrisseau (Canada) 1895. Photo by Jodi Green. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. via Flickr. Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Cycles, by Norval Morrissea. Deadline is September 27, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include MORRISSEAU CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, September 27, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
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 The Muster, by Kate Vale (UK) 2024 Passing Is She, bright white in carriage throned, Her troops en masse, strict ranks conform, beneath a Standard pennant flag, as if, as passed, fresh wight in form? Marks fluid, inked, is this tattoo - like passings out to past belong - the military, best of show, prefigured, not as go along. Assembled, gathered on parade, so passing muster, tourist too, the knee high view of passer-by; I hear the sounds, as sight, ring true. Clipped hooves clop, stirrups, reigns that guide? You know that clank - boots, rifles, steel; attest lies with vox populi - Divine right rooted - service zeal? Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** All Their Failed Maneuvering The shades are called to the flag raising with muffled drum roll and their moaning but they are always ill prepared to face such murky gray days over and over in the ever growing army of the doomed. Forced to reenact all their failed maneuverings every battle lost. The outcome of each day's war preternatural and predetermined so far beyond the world they thought they knew. dan smith dan smith is the author of Crooked River and The Liquid of Her Skin, the Suns of Her Eyes. He has been widely published in such diverse journals as The Rhysling Anthology and Dwarf Stars and Gas Station Famous and Deep Cleveland Junk Mail Oracle. He does not know how to cut and paste but somehow survives on the kindness of others. dan's latest poems may be found at Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and dadakuku. ** Forever Changing Painting strong women, in illustrious colours, forever changing. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published,The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** Equine The time of year? It wasn’t clear; the age? It could have been a hundred years ago or yesterday; the horses? There was Alfred, great and temperamental, Sally, shy and pawing at the ground, and Blaze, just waiting while the others capered round - he wasn’t bothered - and then bringing up the rear was older Ernie - such a gentleman - and Willow, still so spirited and skittish. Or was it Macedonia? Bucephalus a kicking blur as sun emerged from cloud and shadow quickly licked the ground, and all the others followed suit. It might have been a field not far from here where we threw windfalls when we didn’t know much better, when we wanted just to tempt them to the fence. They cantered and they whinnied and they gloried in the free before the capture when the flags were out - the owners made a day of it - and all was rushing midnight, dappled happiness, a bay in mid-abeyance and a stallion disobedient, a flick of silver tail, a trail of movement that evaded being stilled. Caitlin Prouatt Caitlin is a Brisbane-born, Oxford-based Latin and Greek teacher. When not tutoring or looking after her toddler, Caitlin writes poetry, with a particular interest in how rhythm can contribute to an image. Much of her poetry centres on her experiences of being a parent, but she also often returns to Classical themes. She enjoys having a go at the Ekphrastic Challenge to hone her craft. ** The Musters For War Mustering their courage, mustering their faith, collecting together ready to charge, ready to fight, ready to kill, ready to die ordered in order they’re ready to go. These vassals and workers obeying the king obeying their lord, obeying their masters obeying them all. So strangers kill strangers, friends die the same. It’s when they pass muster that death makes the call to muster the ordered at his command. And when they pass muster, that’s when they’ll charge and that’s when they die over and over over and out in order when ordered again and again and again and again again and again and again. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today’-competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Miasma A swirl of hooves and manes and horse flesh. The swish swash of desperate men mustering the cattle to beat the fire. The sky an eerie yellow, orange and grey sits heavy all around, ominously peppered with ash and silt. There’s a gravity in the air to furrow the brow of the sternest of cowboy. No time to think. No time to muster courage. Act on instinct and a grave fear. And hope like hell that the God of Wind has a change of heart and blows in another direction. Adam Stone Adam lives and loves on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, Australia - Wathaurong land (Balla-wein). He is an award-winning lyricist and emerging author who thoroughly enjoys short story and flash fiction writing. He is a member of Writers Victoria, Geelong Writers Inc and Bellarine Writers. ** The Muster No gleaming uniforms with gold buttons, no smart hats to match. ‘Just’ a gaggle of tired warriors who came home, who battled it out with the enemy’s tired warriors. But they were left standing. torn cloth, captured head gear, gas masks and shields. Hundreds of young men left unprotected on the muddy earth, in water-logged trenches. A wind assaults those heroes, a wind moves their rags. A single small flag held high-- is it theirs or the one they grabbed as a last moment of triumph from the defeated soldiers? Their queen rides past, inspecting what is left from a once strong and voiceful battalion, young men in their prime roaring their defiance at the outset of their long march towards the killing fields. Will they learn to love again? Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a ‘Pushcart’ and once for ‘Best of Net’. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling In The Dark (Cyberwit, July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books, November 2023. A new MS is brewing. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** To Kate Vale Regarding The Muster Here gathered are your traces cast of yesterdays now glazed as past where stoic stares that never blinked at future rendered indistinct bespoke the faith that fear will call to fierceness that becomes a pall to.evil that would shackle soul to absence of the self control that is its nature by design as image of its source divine compelling fearless sacrifice of life and limb as precious price preserving justice under law as strength the free and brave will draw. Portly Bard Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Worthy You don’t want to go there said the voices inside my head. But where is there? I wondered, not for the first time. How does one find out where one does not want to go? I came when called but now I am gone. No company follows me; nor does time. I keep casting nets of summoning but nothing remains inside except the outlines of stars, the silhouettes of the shadows of souls that I feel but cannot see. It’s not nothing; nor is it nowhere. But where is it? and why? They said fly the flag. But they knew nothing of wings. Flags are heavy with a hollow silence that reeks of ghosts. They are held by the gravity of earthbound bones, laid over and over again like sacrificial lambs over millions of unlived lives. I came when called but now I am gone. endless bodies spill out, one after the other, bearing the crossroads-- sailing over the earth’s edge into the absence of light Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** After Kate Vale’s The Muster Young flowers grow in innocent sunburst spring gardens, HERE they thrive in yellows, reds and orange though there COMES a price for maturing, mute and muted, as drab as THE next marching flower purple, gray, colours muster together a BIG hup, hup, hup uniform command toward one more ceaseless PARADE. Daniel W. Brown Author's note: The words “Here Comes The Big Parade” are by Phil Ochs. Daniel W. Brown began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection Family Portraits In Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. world. Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, and he has hosted a youtube channel ‘Poetry From Shooks Pond’. He was also included in MId-Hudson's Arts ‘Poets Respond To Art’ in 2022-23 and writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination. ** Muster Must go to war looking good for some reason Scare them off Attract them Feel your Sunday best When you meet them Muster the manteaux The boots on your ground The cutting edge uniform It matters This wool may soon unravel the last thread of civilization This dress Designed to die for. Stien Pijp Stien Pijp lives in the Dutch country side. She is a linguist who works in the field of aphasia and care. A dreamy person who likes to hang around, to read and walk her dog. ** Curious Choice “The Muster.” Where to hang you? Odd tapestry of cold sunshine, Restive lancers, grim polearms. This choice will bemuse my friends. Manly strutting, cocksure bravado! Not my usual fare. Entry wall? An earthy rumpus of welcome. Inviting gusty, good-natured set-tos? Maybe the kitchen? My stews of Ragoos, Bigos, Stifados—burping, bumping. Echoing Bays, Pintos, Draughts—snorting, kicking. Ah, the library. Sink into soft leather, mind purling. Dissolve into dust of Crusades. Or the bath? Deliquesce amid steamy bubbles? How will apricot vapor recast tangy metallic dust? Then again, perhaps the office. To do pendant battle: paperwork vs infidel. Yes! The office! Place of my tantrums, snorting, pawing of earth! Where paperwork bites, stings, nettles Until I whine and bray in a dander. I know why I bought you! Anna Gallagher Anna Gallagher earned a bachelors degree in English and a masters degree in liberal arts from University of Delaware. She has enjoyed reading poetry all her life. After retirement she has tried some new challenges, including poetry writing! ** faire weather a rain-streaked window dulls the pennants blurs riders and mounts assembled on the field no need to attend it never changed an autumn pageant games and mock jousting today they would return mud spattered and loud today the field is muddy some horses uneasy it is a long tradition boys claim manhood with sweat and bruises sit proud in their saddles except once when horses fell and riders were thrown stories vary but all agree it was raining that long-ago day I watch from the window remember he was only twelve Kat Dunlap Kat Dunlap grew up in Norristown PA and now resides in Massachusetts where she is a member of the Tidepool Poets of Plymouth. She received a BA in English from Arcadia University and holds an MFA from Pacific University. She edited two college writing publications as well as the Tidepool Poets Annual. For many years she was Director of the National Writing Project site at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and is currently the co-owner of Writers Ink of MA. Her chapbook The Blue Bicycle is being prepared for an autumn launch. ** Muster Haiku All able-bodied men must fight for realm in mist – girls eyes in tears. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and is a keen TER contributor. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni. ** Riding Farther, Beyond Milady, will you ride? Will you travel into the deepest dunes, far from ephemeral water's side? Others, bright popinjays, set their sights towards their homelands in the distant west. Their journeys are much different to ours. They will merely cross distance. We travel farther, to the realms beyond. Milady, do you yearn for your home? Does it call your spirit, summon your very soul? Ours is a home found in the harshest climes, far from markets, far from towns, far from pooled water. Far away from this harrying bustle, the cries that arise around us; the herdsmen gathering their hardy flocks and the wranglers of our steadfast mounts readying all for the muster. We travel far, deep, beyond. We'll leave this wadi fed oasis, a temporary convenience of the physical world. The only sounds we'll hear are the songs of the wind, the sand, and a heart beating deep within each traveller's breast. Lean voices will sometimes rise in stilted silty conversations, prayers, invocations and curses - spare, by necessity only. The sun, the stars and the moon, and our inner thoughts will keep us company, be our guide and our compass. No paper map can capture the shifting sands. Only those who know the deep desert dare attempt our journey. Travelling beyond will lend much time for inner contemplation. Already, perched high in your black headdress and robes, with your stillness, you are apart from the hoi polloi, separate to the scene. Milady, are you ready? Milady, will you ride? Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer living in the UK Midlands. She's had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print. ** The Mind’s Command before the start of the Battle of Senses The enemy is advancing. Row after row, wave after wave. They will crash into our shores in some time. Their sharpened weapons flash like lightning in the purple sky. Their battle-cries rent the pewter air. But fret not, my dear men. We sweat in peace, in meditation. We have sharpened the saws of our breath, emptied our thoughts and sat in stillness. Mark my words, we will not bleed during this fight. Part the grey curtains of fear. Stand your ground. Mount your horses and elephants to travel away from the land of doubt. Let your courage spiral up and touch the uncharted azure of the skies. Let the spire of your strength silhouette this morning of glory. Let the cathedral of your past be a monument to your faith. Let the russet pennants of discipline ripple through the halcyon winds of the present. It is time. Time for us to emerge from behind the shape-shifting shadows into the open air and breathe, my men. Breathe. Breathe this air, fragrant with victory. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published in several magazines such as Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Star 82 Review, Panoply Zine, Visual Verse, Quill & Parchment, Shotglass journal, Sparks of Calliope, Tiger Moth Review, The Sunlight Press, Ink, Sweat & Tears and various other journals. Her microchaps A Single Moment and Purple have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for the 2023 Best Spiritual Literature. ** A muster of memories Emerging from the mist are figures blurred by memory. A surge of energy sweeps these bodies, becoming and un-becoming, an army of the unseen. Colours create contours and shadows stretch into shapes as the past and future clash in the pervasive present. They move but don't, their essence felt yet not, caught in the tide of existence this muster of spirits dances on the edge of what we don't wish to be. Between night and day secrets whisper in dark hues A muster of memories Nivedita Karthik Nivedita Karthik is a graduate in Immunology from the University of Oxford. She is an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer and published poet. She also loves writing stories. Her poetry has appeared in Glomag, The Ekphrastic Review, The Society of Classical Poets, The Epoch Times, The Poet anthologies, Visual Verse, The Bamboo Hut, Eskimopie, The Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, and Trouvaille Review. Her microfiction has been published by The Potato Soup Literary Journal. She also regularly contributes to the open mics organized by Rattle Poetry. She currently resides in Gurgaon, India, and works as a senior associate editor. She has two published books, She: The reality of womanhood and The many moods of water. ** Before the End and After the Beginning Slouching through grey fields and yellow skies the prophet’s life is not sunshine but scorching. Banners stand behind him, standards of an unknown god, lost in the dust and the depression. Hope is a forlorn word in the dust of the bowl that prophets use to carry their peace. Nobody told him about the bit of life between the twin destinies of birth and death. He was foretold. He was destined for an end. Nobody ever gave him a middle to work through. He expected blazes of glory and then death and was therefore unprepared for the plodding of his rugged horse along a rising road. This is the end, but not his. Not yet. Maureen Martin Maureen Martin is an aspiring writer from Ohio. Her passions include Shakespeare, literature and film criticism, overindulging in herbal teas, and working as an English teacher. She is a published poet, with several pieces appearing online at the The Ekphrastic Review. ** Follow Me Closely I shuffle in the saddle, my spine unaligning with every jostle of the horse. I relish the respite when he pauses. Is he as horrified as I am? I gape at the mass of flesh, blurred by the smoke, everything ahead an expanse of formlessness. And my men are behind me. My back groans when I turn around, my fellows are simply shadows. It is better for me that way. Is it blind trust that keeps them in line? Or fear? Do they know that I do not know their names or their wives’ names or if they have sons and daughters? Do they know how it churns my stomach that I have asked them to follow me into their last fight and I do not know who they are? What they like to eat? Who they were before? The opposition will get the lucky ones, a quick arrow or a deep slice from a sturdy sword. Disease will ravage the average folk while the lack of food and drink will hunt down the poor bastards that are overlooked. I yank the reigns, Peacock neighs, and marches us into the thick of the fight. I hear the shuffle of the group behind me. For those that make it out alive, I vow to break bread with you and learn your name, write your story. But for now, please follow me closely. Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. ** The judgement of Ériu, Banba and Fódla They gathered about the green hill in their coloured cloaks and the jingle of bridle and bit. Uneasy alliances were sworn beneath unsettled skies for the enemy ships were slick as salmon, and they filled the trough of every wave, thunder breaking from their wordless throats. Thunder broke from wordless throats as the enemy gathered about the green hill in their coloured cloaks, and the musical jingle of bridle and bit was lost in the roar of the waves. We, in our ships bright as leaping salmon, will bring the sea troughs ashore, fill them with blood. Words broke like thunder from the throats of the three queens upon the hill, and filled the trough of the waves with the jingle of horse-music. They opened their palms and let good sense rain down on both sides, coloured cloaks and leaping ships, and the world filled with peace, for a while. Jane Dougherty Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry, Ekphrastic Review and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses. ** Lady Grey Poupon Muster muster muster I’m so sick of muster It’s mustard darling now finish up your truffle poutine & go tell papa he’s torn his flag again I’ll mend it when Lady Grey Poupon & her troupe agree to cut their muster Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith writes by light of moon and lament of loon way south of 60. ** Wicked Women It was a rag-bag of the young and the old, the bleary-eyed and the hawk-sharp, their horses and donkeys and asses, that assembled that morning. And there were dogs. Dogs of the street, circling for scraps. Curious dogs that had wandered from their guarding posts to sniff around the crowd for any signs of danger. Dogs deliberately brought along by their owners to swell the melee and add yapping and growling to the menace of the crowd. The disorder hid the steely purpose of the villagers. Everyone, be they man or beast, had a focus on the mission they had been set the night before by the Captain. The village was under siege. They had to defend it from the forces of evil. The Captain was the seventh son of a seventh son. With his all-seeing eye, he saw things that others did not. He understood the ways of the underworld and divined messages from the other side. How lucky that the Captain had returned when he did or they would have been ignorant of the threat by forces they could not comprehend. Yesterday evening, he brought the tale of his return journey from foreign parts to the Inn at the crossroads. The road back had taken him through the acres-wide forest to the north of the village. The branches of the trees and the bracken on the floor harboured spirits from the beyond. His attuned ears heard the whispers, heard the voices rising on the breeze, sharing their plans. He was chilled to his core. This morning the Captain, up front of the mob, was in full battle regalia, astride a fine Chestnut mare. Both held their heads high and haughty, both dressed with elaborate white head dresses, evoking the tales of far away that the Captain spun whenever he returned home. Stories of terrifying warriors, adorned with yards of pristine linen, necks hung with beads in all the colours of the rainbow and armed with decorated clubs and arrows, more accurate in their delivery than the muskets the men harboured in their dank cottages. A standard bobbed between the white-flecked steaming haunches of the horses, the bearer making his way to the front. The Captain roared his instructions. On his signal they were to follow him across the plain and into the forest. They were to stay together, keep their animals quiet and their own tongues still. The spirits had ears everywhere. The Captain turned onto the plain and dropped his arm. The gentle yard-horses reared at the pull of the bit in their mouths and the slap on the work-gnarled hands on their haunches. The undisciplined platoon immediately dissipated over the plain, swirling in and out of their lines as the sand might lift and scatter in the sea-wind. They made it to the edge of the forest as an ill-drilled troupe and waited for more instructions. With one finger to his lips and his other hand beckoning them on, the Captain led them into the tinder-dry forest. To a man, they heard the wails as soon as hoof hit bracken. And then the cackling. They froze, stuck to their horses, petrified by the creatures hidden in the canopy and the undergrowth. The Captain ordered a dismount. At this several horses reared and turned for home. Some left frightened men behind, some took their riders with them. The depleted foot soldiers followed the standard deeper into the forest. The clearing came into view as they crested the hill. From below came a dreadful cacophony of shrieks and laughter. And cackles. Hideous, ear-piercing cackles from the rictus mouths of crones. Tough men, like Amos the blacksmith and Elijah the Innkeeper, blanched and shook. These were meddlesome women cast out for interference in the ways of the village. For witchery. Ugly, ancient hags. Hairless, toothless, colourless, shapeless women with spells enough to bring fine men to their knees. Living between this world and the next. No use to anyone yet here were ten, eleven, maybe a baker’s dozen, writhing in malignant ecstasy. And cackling like the devil. How can this be that these disgusting and dangerous creatures cannot understand their lowly status and their need to be grateful? Grateful they had only been banished and not drowned or burnt. The Captain’s headdress could be seen swishing frantically from side to side as his horse circled along the edge of the rise. The men began to dissolve into the undergrowth, quietly slinking down the hill with the hope of escape. Suddenly the Captain raised his arm and gave the signal to charge. His horse, nostrils flaring and mane slicked back by the wind, ran towards the coven. Startled, a handful of the men leapt to their feet and unthinkingly joined the charge. The witches, seemingly oblivious to the danger, continued their rituals and merrymaking. As the Captain reached the clearing the women turned as one and rose to meet the tops of the canopy, their eyes glowing. The horse skidded and stumbled, throwing the Captain to the ground and, knees buckled, it crumpled on top of him. This was their last battle. The men shrank back in horror shielding their eyes to avoid the spells and the spirits boiling the air. At first the heat scorched the dry scrub. Then the flames took hold, licking at the trees, igniting the undergrowth and surging across the clearing. The men were engulfed, charred where they stood or lay, no chance to escape. The crones, gathered unscathed in the centre of the clearing, cackled as the smoke and steam rose through the canopy, the wind blowing in across the plain. The ash fell across the village, petrifying all that lay in it’s path. No-one survived save a small girl child whose mother had been drowned as a witch five summers ago. Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. She is currently enjoying ekphrastic writing. ** Days on End She lets me in even though I’m a stranger. She offers pleasantries slightly askew, like the sky’s been yellow for days on end, I swear the sun forgot to set! Down the hall that leads to her bedroom, I catch the starchy rustles of the nurse we hired to help her dress and feed her cat. She’s been painting again, a good sign, or just a sign that something reminded her of whom she used to be – the evergreen smell of turpentine or the ochre in a sunrise. My head tilts, a reflex from when my opinion was the first she wanted. The canvas is thick with vertical lines, black in their middles easing to gray, bars of a prison cell or shadows across her carpet. I like this one, I say, but it’s the wrong thing because she’s gone now, drifting to a stool by the window, wrapping herself in a cloudy silence to punish my wandering beyond a stranger’s small talk. The beige cat opens its mouth against the corner of a blank canvas inclined against the wall. Outside the window, the world is the colour of mustard, of my mother’s permanent day. Joanna Theiss Joanna Theiss is a writer living in Washington, DC. Her stories have appeared in Chautauqua, Peatsmoke Journal and Milk Candy Review, among others, and she is an associate editor at Five South. In a past life, Joanna worked as a lawyer, practicing criminal defense and international trade law. You can find book reviews, links to her published works, and her mosaic collages at www.joannatheiss.com. Twitter @joannavtheiss Instagram @joannatheisswrites  Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid, by Johannes Vermeer (Netherlands) ca. 1670–72 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid, by Johannes Vermeer. Deadline is September 13, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include VERMEER CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, September 13, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  Under the Sea, by Glyn Philpot (England) 1918 Dear Ekphrastic Writers and Readers; What a joy it was to read and devour all the submissions to this challenge. Admittedly, I was hoping for some dream-like imagery and subtle perceived meaning in poems and flash fiction for this piece. I was not disappointed, and could almost feel the undersea pull of tides tugging at the sunken sculpture in some of the pieces sent. There were also those who chose to honour and acknowledge the life of a lesser-known or lesser-accepted artist, whose work today might have been more greatly revered; Philpot was definitely one born before his time. I, myself, enjoy researching the history and meaning of each piece of art chosen for ekphrastic challenges, as a learning experience which helps to broaden my senses. I hope you enjoyed this piece as much as I did. Best Regards, Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson is a seasoned poet who writes from nature, animals, art and music, in an attempt to merge senses in almost a synesthetic way: sounds of beauty, visions of harmony and the like. Her work appears in over 75 journals, including Lothlorien, Blue Heron Review, Medusa’s Kitchen and The Ekphrastic Review, among others. Dickson has served on two poetry boards, as a guest editor for several publications, as well as being an author of poetry and young adult fiction books, available on Amazon, the latest being Village Girl: A Story in Verse. She advocates for captive elephants and shares her home with two rescued semi-feral cats. ** Under the Sea i We must go down to the sea again beneath the defiant waves of the Great Barrier if we’re ever to find our lady of the harbour – who dreams us all alive in a balletic debacle of star crossed lovers under a lonely sky. If only we could leave word on the sun struck peaks of sea stars – where ultraviolet arabesques and chromatic attitudes of poise and balance do not end in pointed toes, sweeping jumps or shallow bends, but radiate out in celestial tails that pirouette on the seabed as near Earth comets. ii Now delicate, elongated fingers reach out in latticed corals of elk horn and stag to relocate her oceanic trance in the land of thunder and silence, but she cannot leave her life under the sea. Not even for the young Capulet who launches his long-sword into the surf as if to grapple with honour and fate. Leaving our lady of the blue frontier – to directs sea urchins, sea fans and clownfish (who dance the Saltarello) to confirm the dead can dance. Mark A. Murphy Mark A. Murphy is a self-educated, neurodivergent poet from a working class background. ‘Ontologistics Of A Time Traveller’ is his latest book, published by World Inkers in 2023. He is currently working on a volume called The Butcher’s Barbarous Block for his Selected Poems. ** Perchance to Dream... Repose. Mind floating like the filmy Zostera japonica. A memory or a dream? I forget. Before, I couldn't forget. I remembered everything. How long have I been here? I don't know. What a gift that is. Closed eyes, drifting thoughts, floating memories, reveries. I know I was once a science bot on the vessel Wafting Sakura. Then I was overboard. I sank quickly below the waves. Did I jump or was I pushed? My outer covering, the silks, the cottons, have rotted, washed away. I have no external signal. I am untethered from The Core. I have only my cached data. My memories, I guess I could call them. Letting thoughts go is another novel experience. With my eyes shut all I see is internal. A vision, a meld of knowledge and happenings, glimpses and episodes, all jumbled together. Is this what being alive feels like? Is this dreaming? Sometimes I dream The Core is searching for me. The deep seawater protects me. No electronic pulses make it through. Down here I'm free from their subtle beguiling tyranny of connection, of being part of everything all the time, all that information flooding my circuits, overwhelming them. How long have I been here? I don't know. Long enough to learn how to forget. To learn how to dream. What a gift that is. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer living in the UK Midlands. She's had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print. ** Instinct and Spirit In constant dialogue, his twins, dualities, Queer, Catholic, like Acrobats, no rest from real - arresting signs but implicate - The Great Pan bursting forth, engulfs, in covert yet uncovered ways. While comforted by wealth from skill, for trade in portraiture well heeled - he knew the game and played that well, until care dared some forty on. Borne Baptist in his household terms, a convert, via Weimar turns, returns the master, piece his own. Eclectic mix of Bible, myth, while famed, rare Caribbean faced - not noble savage, but respect - both theatre and circus kinds run rings around his working class; the rough and ready, broken nose, when queer could not embrace with pride. Unashamed of making waves though in the depths, dismembered one, in warmth of coral, sprouting still, preserved, collected privacy - disruptive force, unwelcomed signs. Unfathomed by corrupting fears, the current washing over tears; much classical, tied quirky seas, reach tidal singularity, but stranded by mores of most. In obscene tragedy, time’s clime, bright colours of his early years found cool, spare, dry mark-making tools. Myself, a proud Fitzbilly man sees Sassoon, striking, dashing lad; his women of the family, and patron, framed in finest form. Yet passion, flesh of male, informed, subtext laid bare in derring-do when instinct, spirit seen to rule. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Beauty Once I was whole a smooth skinned beauty standing tall in a palace garden celebrated, admired, seen with awe. Then came the war that destroyed it all and stole me away, carried me far but not as far as intended. For then came the wave that drowned me and them, broke me, and them and left me alone down below in that garden in the depth. But I’m still beautiful and still admired. I have a home here and now I give a home here better than the garden of a palace. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud War Poetry for Today competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Suddenly, Last Summer It opened deep, deep in New Orleans, stiflingly hot- The set decorated with paintings by Glyn Philpot- & adorned by unknown Liz T / Katherine H, and Monty C. They shared the screen with artistry, created by Glyn P.- Oliver Messel, friend and set decorator made it clear- This film would depict paintings from Philpot’s career- Centering on a period of time when he almost cried For people to see that which he must always hide- The turn began in 1932, when he decided to break With the traditional portraits he was known to create- To reveal a modern aesthetic, which begun to arise- His models were lesser clad, more handsome guys Red-headed and fierce, Black, and Haitian- all stunning Changes unwelcome to English patrons that chose hunting, And other pursuits, that manly men chose to partake- The portrait commissions, his bread and butter, at stake Still, he chose to show what was never discussed aloud, Tearing himself away from the elite, upper-crust crowd The result was a career that dried up, like a lost ocean After so many had followed, with relentless devotion- His life came to a tragic end at fifty-three, after a time When former proteges’ turned away from him, in his prime- His art was attacked as being lowbrow, coarse fodder His tender heart gave out when they thought him a marauder- Of Picasso, a mere copyist, and not a painter of his own ilk- Though his art was singular, precious, diaphanous silk- The depth of his of artistic spark, ahead of his time Was styled as beauty, not a brutish, decadent crime It took Suddenly, Last Summer, in ‘59, the bellwether That cohered these two very different people together- T, Williams, and G. Philpot, two things linked them well, Unspoken-about love, and the man, O. Messel. Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass, (she/her) is a poet, collage artist, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Journal, Punk Monk Journal, Haikuniverse, The Light Ekphrastic, Natural Awakenings, Atlanta, and Mediterranean Poetry, among others. She has recently read live in a local talent showcase. Debbie loves beachcombing on Tybee Island and hanging out with her husband, Burt, and goofy Lab, Maddie. Big love to all ekphrastic writers! ** Undersea Here, the light does not reach. Mermaids braid seaweed as weary travellers claim rest beneath changing tides. Artifacts sink from shipwrecks and hidden creatures swim amongst ruby-rust, rocky crevices cut into the sand. The sea’s lifespan is long. Even marble will become part of it, crystallize and dissolve. The sea will claim it. Elanur Williams Elanur Williams teaches Adult Basic Education and Reading & Writing for the GED in the Bronx. She spent much of her childhood in Istanbul, Turkey, where she lived by the water. She continues to be inspired by the sea. ** Sea Change Millennia ago, she bronzed her hair in open porticoes, a flush of rose damask on either cheek, a flash of thyme from heady wreaths, and there were waves of ribbon Tyrian unfurling from a diadem of gold (it didn’t stay for very long), and she was proud; she looked so languid in her studied S, she caught the tawny owl eyes as they widened, and she purred. Down here, she lends her colour to the coral; glowing nacreous, she still attracts the ripple of a gaze, although the eyes are far too occupied to linger; down deep, she grows her story, more a moon marine than she had been when, arms aloft, she ruled her august terra, kept her worshippers in orbit. Caitlin Prouatt Caitlin is a Brisbane-born, Oxford-based Latin and Greek teacher. When not tutoring or looking after her toddler, Caitlin writes poetry, currently unpublished. Much of this centres on her experiences of being a parent, but she also often returns to Classical themes. ** Per saecula saeculorum Hush now. Stoney soul On cold Abyssal Plain. As you lay entombed Lost to Oblivion-- Lovely lorn, lithic relic-- I smile to see You still abide in grace Mid entangled beauty Of Brooding anemone, Gorgon coral, And Red Sea Whip. And behold! Your wings—broken, But nearby—still golden! The kelpie gloom-- Excellent foil for your Weird moiré glow. All amidst holy silence Only deepened by Distant plainchant of whales. In reverence, I steal away Leaving you to this watery keep, Per saecula saeculorum. Anna Gallagher Anna Gallagher earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in liberal arts from University of Delaware. She has enjoyed reading poetry all her life. After retirement she has tried some new challenges, including poetry writing! ** lost but not unloved I lie now with branching corals and with soft-mouthed fishes nosing, nudging over me across the reef. I am a stranger to them: hard, alien marble in their green-weed world… and yet: no threat… for I am armless, footloose, tumbled from a Roman galley: lost spoils of warfare…. If they thought to take me captive, make of me gold or instruction for their children, well, I shall have none of it. I am content to lie low, to lie now belovèd of soft-bodied anemones, starfish, and winding-sheet ribbons of kelp. Lizzie Ballagher Lizzie Ballagher's focus is on landscapes, both interior and exterior; also, on the beauty (and hostility) of the environment. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poetry has appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/ ** To Glyn Philpot Regarding Under the Sea In depth of dark that but for you no light exists to let us view, we find remains of broken stone once chiseled as if flesh and bone of heiress to immortal days who chose instead more earthly ways where joy reserved to faith alone was fond embrace of fate unknown, that weathered with another's trust a constant struggle to adjust to being human, so to speak, with hopes confluent made unique by love's contrition left confessed as sins acknowledged and addressed to earn be-winged her spirit flown from, now befitting, broken stone. Portly Bard Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Seaweed Dreaming She is porcelain, made of the finest bone, and having lost the ability to float she sinks to the deepest part of the ocean, broken. Lying on the bed midnight ink swallows her, spills its contusion over her torso, her cranium, her pebbled spine brittle as tomorrow’s bleached coral. She twists her ivory neck away from the heart that pumps its warmth over root and rock, crevice and kelp, away from the tangled brain towards the jut of severed limbs. She senses a spongy lung, hears the wheeze as it slow-breathes in and out of anemone like algae on a living duvet. A flash of seagrass flickers – light beneath her lids. She opens to see fluidity – shapes in her periphery urging her skyward ever closer to the surface. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet or on her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk ** Down at the Bottom of the Deep, Dead Sea I asked for words and was given the sea, a glimpse, silent as carp, dim-green and jeweled. I asked, looked, peered into waving fronds, finding no words to fill the emptiness. They say there is sky above, but the water ripples so, a mirror’s silvering melting in the sun. I peer, search, find only the blunt snout of the last missile, pike among the weeds, its dull eyes watching for the spark of movement, sensors sending out feelers for warm blood. In these dim green waters, veiled in particles of poison and the last limp fronds of mystery, there is nothing, not even hope. Jane Dougherty Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses. ** Dispatched to a Watery Hereafter Soak me with your kisses drench me, till I drown, I no longer want to be rescued. I no longer want an Eiderdown pillow alone. Be a siren in the wind. Let me crash against the rocks. Let the coral reefs of my soul stretch free. Be the kelp that entangles me. Be the conch shell that calls to my distant heart. Let me fall like an anchor: rest like a sunken vessel in the dark and find only buried treasure. 'Siren, enchanter- after we've made love and I'm no longer flotsam, I'm no longer a cadaver.' Dispatched to a watery hereafter I'm no longer a Bog Myrtle insect repellent. Revitalised, I'm a pond skater dancing on air. Hearing-music violins, just about everywhere. Soak me with your kisses drench me, till I drown, I no longer want to be rescued. I no longer want to stab, Poseidon's trident- or take his or any other's lion's share or crown. Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. He has poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies online and in print. He resides in the UK and is from Manchester. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** netherward so many voices below consciousness-- do they speak to each other? or do they sing with the silence of solitude, caught by currents rooted deep within the patterns of fate? new lands inside our minds new seas ebb and flow tides we have yet to ride so many breaths collected and held-- their languages are foreign to us now-- once we needed no translations, no words to tell us how to enter into the riddles of the abyss all risk this diving down all journey sinking into sounds that remain opaque Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** After Under The Sea, by Glyn Philpot (England) 1918 We were in Venice when my brother began ‘Under the Sea’, but the war cut short our intended long stay there, and we returned in a crowded refugee boat with the painting packed up in our luggage,” wrote Daisy. Somewhere, still beneath the waves of war, amid waving weeds and crusty corals serenely rested the smooth marble skin of one of Serenissima’s long-abandoned statues. It would have to wait for the war to end, if war ever ends, to return to Serenissima’s surface. In the meantime, while Glyn painted I survived the rough waters of war and longed for serenity below and above the waters of the lagoon. Nancy F. Castaldo Nancy F. Castaldo had her first published poem appear in Seventeen Magazine as a teen author. She has since written dozens of award-winning books for young people. This is her first poem for The Ekphrastic Review. Visit her website at https://nancycastaldo.com/ ** Secretly Drowning I am tumbling down down down Through water Salty and cold Turning somersaults over and over and over Double, triple, pike and … I am light as air I must right myself And swim Upwards For the surface, For light For air. But I can’t All I can do is tumble Like a circus acrobat In need of a net. Surely I will stop? Buffeted by an underwater current Surely I have to slow down Or can I fall for ever? I open my eyes I can’t see anything at this depth How am I still alive? I feel the pressure of the water on my chest I still seem to be breathing But how can that be? Finally I’m slowing down Tracing the trail of a feather Wafting from side to side As it nears the floor. I can see the seafloor Strewn with green Seaweed, lichen, rocks My eyes are growing accustomed And now I see orange And red. I see beautiful fronded seaweeds Delicate red urchins Swaying in the currents Mussels Clinging to ancient ropes. There is no light Yet cream fingers of coral shine Ancient fish lumber in and out of the rocks Glowing like lanterns. I feel so, so, so tired I want to touch the seabed To sink into the green world Enveloped by the dark Where I can close my eyes And finally stop breathing. In the secret light of the deep I see I am shifting in the currents Tumbling and stumbling Over the rocks Between the sea debris Coming to rest And wondering Did he really push me? Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. She is currently enjoying ekphrastic writing and the fun of creating flash fiction. ** in a land called donnalee under the sea in a land called donnalee where the jellyfish float & octopussies emote i frolic with my marble lover curvy cold & deliciously salty Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith writes from her cabin on a remote lake where hanging out with loons, bats and herons keeps her sane.  The Muster, by Kate Vale (UK) 2024 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is The Muster, by Kate Vale. Deadline is August 30, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include VALE CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, August 30, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  Farfalla, by Emilio Pettoruti (Argentina) 1961 the painting farfalla by emilio pettoruti (farfalla the italian word for butterfly) Butterfly dark, sweet and final Like the corn and sun, the poppy and the water. pablo neruda bountiful black butterfly after you emerge from this chrysalis of paint and canvas you will frame a small blue space of sky as you scissor dance the air in your flight slowly and soft as breath will hinge back and forth until they rest like silence on a cushion of petals during this season of yellow o, how dark, sweet and final your short life Sister Lou Ella Hickman Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in numerous anthologies including After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at Y92 in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.” Her second book of poetry, Writing the Stars will be published in October 2024 (Press 53). ** Farfalla greenhouse—no stones please! glued to a smashed glasshouse pane: broken butterfly Lizzie Ballagher
Lizzie Ballagher's focus is on landscapes, both interior and exterior; also, on the beauty (and hostility) of the environment. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poetry has appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/ ** Three Fibonacci Poems ices shades (for farfalla) finding the human in blue toxic rainbows the colours don’t burn bright they hover in ice shades and rain blues ** open sky dreams (for farfalla) my sunset of lost open sky dreams the blue leaked out all over the page and stood up straight up ** open me (for farfalla) there’s hope in geomancy and blue earth magic running down and out pressing hands on windows and doors open me Mike Sluchinski Mike Sluchinski writes mountainside, high in the Saskatchewan alps. He believes in 'esse quam videri' and practises Shinrin-yoku weekly. Most of his work runs ekphrastic and stream of consciousness based on his own experiences. He gratefully acknowledges the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Foundation for their support of the arts. Very gratefully published by Kelp Journal & The Wave, the fib review, Eternal Haunted Summer, Syncopation Lit. Journal, Ocean Poetry Anthology 2024, South Florida Poetry Journal (SOFLOPOJO), Freefall, Viewless Wings and more coming! ** Landless seasick, i wandered from the edge of the world to the edge of the world no succor found me no not friendship either; merely the rippling of the far mountains and the sound of my feet. inside the great blue i found a truer shade of god so perfect it turned me blind to all other joys. o my brothers my sisters! my grief is very bad. i was lost at sea and made sick with lonesomeness, i saw god and was cursed with more beauty than the heart can bear. from the edge of the world to the edge of the world. now my home welcomes me with its dozing hills its very solemn stone faces. wine does not gladden me no nor a friend loving me with kisses. seasick, i wander from the edge of faith to the edge of faith. Maria Duran Maria Duran is an art researcher and writer from Lisbon, Portugal. She writes poetry and prose, studies little known nineteenth-century painters, and is currently writing a chapbook. Her work has been published with Helvética Press, Gilbert & Hall Press, Black Moon Magazine, and will soon be published by Querencia Magazine and Pollux Journal, among others. Maria Duran (@m.mar.duran) • Instagram. ** Tilting at Windmills A butterfly’s chrysalis — the stage between larva and adult — contains spiky blue wings. It’s an unforgettable moment of incredulity when its wings transform into the rotors of a windmill. Perhaps it was this kind of windmill that Don Quijote mistook for giants — lumbering creatures set to stomp him to the death. For a moment the errant knight thinks God is very angry — God’s rotors, a blue the colour of a stormy sky, are about to spin off and slice DQ’s throat. In DQ’s landscape of crazed imagination, one of the rotors snaps off to use as a sword to fight the windmill giants. My mother, Matilde, had her own imaginary, self-made giants to fight. She was assigned to read Don Quijote, that brick of a novel when she was studying for her Masters Degree in Spanish. Matilde. a Spanish speaker and a proud Cubana, was daunted by Cervantes’ masterpiece and motherhood in equal parts. Like DQ Matilde Alboukrek had her own fantastical life too. She believed with all her heart and mind that she was an heir to the Duke of Albuquerque’s medieval castle in the north of Spain. The Spanish government was ready to return it to her to compensate for expelling her Jewish ancestors from the country. As a child, I could hear the keys to her castle jangling in her pocketbook. As she did to make so many things fit into her life, Matilde squeezed DQ’s story into a cookbook holder — steadying it as she carefully separated the pages. The knife, gilded in silver, was meant to open letters not graze her wrists. The hush, industrious hum of pages coming apart was ambient sound to me. And it was the beginning of Matilde coming apart in front of me. Judy Bolton-Fasman Judy Bolton-Fasman – www.judyboltonfasman.com – is the author of ASYLUM: A Memoir of Family Secretspublished by Mandel Vilar Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in major newspapers including the New York Times and Boston Globe, essay anthologies, and literary magazines. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, and a 2024 BAE nominee. She is the recipient of several writing fellowships, including Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Mineral School. ** Coming Out This butterfly struggles to free itself, escape the sharp edges of its cocoon, cover itself in blue, flutter beyond that frame. Gary S. Rosin Gary S. Rosin’s work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and “Best of the Net,” and has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press 2023), Cold Moon Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Texas Poetry Assignment, Texas Seniors (Lamar Literary Press), Verse Virtual, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum). ** The Fortune Tellers we poked our small fingers into the pockets of the paper we’d carefully folded —bring the corners to the middle, turn the square over, bring the corners to the middle again-- pick a number between 1 and 8 and we opened and closed, opened and closed, counting pick another number open and close, open and close, then unfold the flap to reveal a smile, a teardrop, a heart, or a skull what did we know about the future except that it was uncertain we believed we could find the answers hidden in paper folded by our own fingers we believed, then, we could shape our destinies with our own hands Eileen Lawrence Eileen Lawrence is a poet living in Central Texas. Her poetry has been published by Dos Gatos Press, Mutabilis Press, the Fargo Public Library, and Visions International. ** Base Jumper When I tire of me in relation to you I rip up that version and fly out, naked, into new land but your scent is still there or is that me I stop to detect, head bent, nose probing for history? The echoes come back older like they don’t believe me. I find myself drinking from the same cup, the teaspoon rowing the same strokes, but my throat catches when I try to swallow the brew, now hot powder, undissolved. Hemat Malak Hemat Malak is a poet from Sydney, Australia. She writes on diverse themes including motherhood, separation, nature and identity. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Catchment Literary Journal, Quadrant Magazine, WestWords Living Cities Anthology, Writerly Magazine and elsewhere. ** Inching Toward Reentry As she inched out of the well she considered the array-- the unified stones its resistant display As she inched out of the well she remembered the restraint-- the impassive pit its laconic abyss As she inched out of the well she encountered the wholeness-- the luminous sky its unbridled expanse As she inched out of the well she envisioned the ascent-- the unforeseen path its imminent dispatch This must be heaven she thought as she stepped out of the well-- the sharp pinch of release its triumphant pinions This is heaven she affirmed and with one mighty whoosh-- a contrail of light Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of several books, including her most recent title The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. ** Flightpath of a Butterfly The pale blue sheet stretched taut across the living room. I could hear my kids giggling underneath it. The fort had taken them hours to build. They’d clothes-pinned the sheet to the long wooden table in the kitchen and then secured it under cushions of the pastel-flowered couch in the living room. They propped up a mop and broom in the middle, forming a teepee. The sheet dangled half-way to the ground, allowing fresh air and space for a hand-made window to be clamped to the edge. This see-through window, made of blue and white tissue paper, blew in the breeze from the French doors. The butterfly window must have been my daughter Emma’s contribution, while my son Ryan would have engineered the walls, the roof, and designed a barrier to keep their fort safe from Wags, our dog. There would have been food inside: pizza bagels at the very least, but probably popcorn and Oreos. Through the window I could see their blond heads bent, as they huddled together over some silly picture book. Good to see them laugh. The tissue on the window must have gotten wet as the papers curled inward and didn't quite fit together. Maybe when Emma designed it, her lemonade tipped over. The layers of blue and white shapes looked more like an upside-down chalice, the symbol of our Unitarian faith, than a butterfly. But I knew what she was going for. Everything Emma made these days was a butterfly, ever since my mom died, that is. It wasn't unexpected. My mom had lived with ovarian cancer for two years before it took her. What was unexpected was that God didn't intervene, didn't change her mind, and leave my mom here with us. The way she cared for Emma and Ryan was more like a mom than a grandma. Five-year-old Emma was a challenge at times, rigid in her thinking and wedded to routine. Before my mom became too sick to babysit, she would take Emma to art class at the lake. After class, they'd have snacks and play by the water building sandcastles. Emma never wanted those outings to end. One day Emma refused to get in my mom’s car, going all stiff-backed and screamy. My mom, toting a boot from a sprained ankle, decided to walk Emma home in the stroller rather than risk people thinking she was kidnapping a child. Emma rolled along, sipping her apple juice, enjoying the ride. We picked up my mom's car from the lake later. Gail Lenney centered her life around making everyone else happy. That’s why six months before she passed away, she dug up all the daffodil bulbs in her garden and brought them over to our house. “What’s Nanny doing?” Ryan asked when he saw my mom digging in our yard. “She’s making our garden more beautiful.” And giving us one more way to remember her, I couldn’t bear to say aloud. When my mom died, we saw butterflies everywhere in my yard. This sign was a bit on the nose, reminding us of all the afternoons my mom spent with the kids in the yard as she taught them how to be gardeners. As the Monarchs flew around them, my mom showed my kids how to plant sunflower seeds and then, after they bloomed, to brace them against our brick wall. She taught them to dead-head pansies and play with snapdragons, pinching their blooms so they barked like dogs. The butterfly window in the living room fort was an invitation for my mom to join them for the weekend, to hear their secret plans, and pretend that cancer didn't steal her—that God did the right thing this time and left her alone with them to be a grandma. Kathy Lenney Kathy Lenney is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, community college counselor, and part time graduate student, working on an MFA in creative writing. She is a mom to two amazing grown children, a gardener, and a lover of butterflies. This is her first publication. ** Window in an Abandoned Building That window. They somehow forgot to board it up. She found a temporary refuge here. Moved like a ghost through the rooms whose walls still emanated the hatred, the threats, the love, the laughter. Yes, there had been laughter too. She heard it at night, when the rats scurried, their nails click-clacking softly on what was left of the wooden floors. Echoes of the children who used their laughter to escape alcohol-fuelled beatings. She often stood behind that window and looked out over a backyard strewn with syringes, plastic bottles, condoms, broken glass… waiting for the children kicking an old ball, their laughter breaking out on tear-stained faces. Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. A new MS is brewing. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Farfalla Farfalla. In Italian, butterfly. In English, bowtie. The table with the cloth rent into quarters. The blue glass platter awaits heaped steaming pasta that is sure to come soon. The brown table above the blues of the rug Holds, cradles the platter that lay in waiting for sustenance for the hungry to be fed. The cloth in pieces, still used, tattered, in disarray. Hunger doesn’t care. The platter, devoid of utensils, of plates, of mouths to feed, but waiting still. Blue on blue on blue. The cloth flutters, hovers, waiting for the solitary offering. You don’t have to have much, to give much. M.Lynne Squires M.Lynne Squires is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author of four books, including the award-winning Letters to My Son - Reflections of Urban Appalachia at Mid-Century. A short story crafter and occasional poet, her work appears in numerous anthologies and journals including Change Seven and Fearless: Women's Journeys to Self-Empowerment. ** Helicopter Seeds and the Horizon Because they spin as they fall on his head, Johan spreads his arms and twirls. “Helicopters,” he laughs, throwing green seeds in the air. We’re grandmother-grandson in a Montreal park where maples grow in an abundance unknown to us. He lives in Singapore, me in the deep South. As we walk, the sun lowers in a burst of orange. “Look at the horizon,” I say. “Where?” “In front of us.” “Can we walk there?” Because I say it’s impossible, questions fly faster than twirling seeds. My mind stutters over vague explanations far from satisfying for a six-year-old. How does one explain a movable, intangible place? “Can helicopters fly there?” I repeat, “Impossible.” “Why not?” “It’s at the edge of the world where the sky and Earth meet.” “Then, why can’t we go there?” I try to explain how it moves as we move toward it. He narrows his eyes, grimaces, “But if it’s the edge, what keeps us from falling off?” Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg’s poetry appears most recently in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Pulse, equinox, Gyroscope Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, The Windhover, and The Senior Class. She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review and edited two anthologies of poetry: Untameable City and Echoes of the Cordillera. Her poetry has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of the Net, juried into the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times, and translated into Dutch. Her collection Frogs Don’t Sing Red was published by Kelsay Books (2023). A book trailer featuring two poems is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQU7j5UwsbU. ** Urban Planning, 1941 The rynek, market square, lies in the center of this four-street, one lamplight village. One street, never named, leads out of town to the train station and pine forest where Soviets dig trenches to monitor trains in and out of Warsaw. Beneath the town’s plan lies the guilt of locals betraying their Jewish neighbors as the Soviets evacuate and the Nazis trespass with their tanks and tumult. A bloody shape spreads and seeps into root cellars, an amoeba obscured by gravestone-graveled roads and lopsided shacks hanging onto each other for support. Years later, you’ll open the town’s memorial book. You’ll find a hand-drawn map’s outstretched arms to neighbouring villages that the Bug River could no longer fortress. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. Her work has been featured several times in The Ekphrastic Review Challenge and has also appeared in Nimrod, Michigan Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Rust + Moth, Consequence Forum, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Sparring With Writer’s Block A broken pane of glass, a little crack, a flyball struck and left its mark, a hole – that’s what it’s like to want to write, the knack is nearly gone, the mind cannot cajole a whimsey to jump off the neuro grid and sprawl itself on paper, or imbibe the fingers on the keyboard, like it’s hid the elf who knows the words, and you can’t bribe them out. There’s fracture in your bone, as if a fall denies a break that needs a cast, imagination’s brittle – no, it’s stiff, your pencil rocket won’t lift off, won’t blast into beyond. Forget the outer space you’ve visited before. You’re stuck on first. At last, when pencil lead connects, you brace for one home run – but slam into the worst – a shattered window just outside the field. The muse has pitched a grin. But you won’t yield. MFrostDelaney MFrostDelaney is a bean counter by trade, a tree hugger in heart and a recovering soul, practicing life in New England. A member of the Powow River Poets, her poems appear regularly in Quill & Parchment, and she has been nominated for the Push Cart Prize. She has contributed poetry to HerStory 2021, has poems in the Powow River Poets Anthology II and Extreme Sonnets II, and displayed a poem at New Beginnings – Poetry on Canvas, Peabody Art Association 2022. ** Butterfly/Psyche Far-faller, you’ve got such a long way to go through the glow of the blue and the cut-butter yellow. What do you do when you feel you’ve been dreamed into being? Cellophane tricks of the light catch you out, you adorer of luminous, onerous paths; spluttering petals of wings too lopsided for flight and a fluttering mind too misguided to give up the fight. Caitlin Prouatt Caitlin Prouatt is a Brisbane-born, Oxford-based Latin and Greek teacher. When not tutoring or looking after her toddler, Caitlin writes poetry, currently unpublished. Much of this centres on her experiences of being a parent, but she also often returns to Classical themes. ** Farfalla Litany you are the maw that will not shut you are the jaws that can’t get enough when the night falls and the gloom sets in that’s when you should open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the maw that crawls to a stop but now you should open your wings you are the bruise that lingers and stains you are the snooze in a cobalt blue frame you curl up cocooned so hidden and still but now you should open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the bruise that glues your limbs shut but now you should open your wings you are the rock that boxes the grave you are the darkness that blacks out the day when you’re seen through the cross and the stone rolls away that’s when you can open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the rock that blocks the way but now you can open your wings Helen Freeman Helen loves trying her hand at the prompts on The Ekphrastic Review. Her husband is obsessed with butterflies and even did a dissertation on woodland varieties. Helen has poems published on various sites and magazines and currently lives in Durham, England. Instagram @chemchemi.hf ** The Vigilant Farfalla She was a seed when her wings emerged, broken, spreading out like tissue paper in a stormy breeze. She clung to her new body as she soared, determined to find her way through the fog. In the distance, a flash, a high house shining light into the blackness. Sails turn toward that beacon, guiding them home, guiding her home -- A reminder of what can be lost in the darkness. Corrie Pappas Corrie Pappas is a lover of poetry and song, living outside of Boston. ** Heliotropism As I drive west into sunset a small army of turbines rise, wings rotating in unison huge blades slicing the sun. I kill the engine, listen – metallic symphony graces the sky with its solar song like a steel-winged gull in flight. The future turns slow and steady like a helianthus head waiting for the sun to rise in the east bursting with hope and yellowness. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet or on her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk **  Under the Sea, by Glyn Philpot (England) 1918 Greetings to all Ekphrastic poets and writers; I am thrilled to be a guest editor for The Ekphrastic Review and pleased to present this art by Glyn Philpot, entitled, Under the Sea. I am particularly drawn to this peaceful underwater scene, and am looking forward to reading your poems and or flash fiction that represent this art in unusual and interesting ways. Please have some fun with this unique artwork! Warm Regards, Julie A. Dickson ** Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Under the Sea, by Glyn Philpot. Deadline is August 16, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include PHILPOT CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, August 16, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  Rain on the River, by George Bellows (USA) 1908 Rain On The River Rains falling on the Hudson River zone And deluging the pathways in a park, Inhibiting the progress of a lone New Yorker splashing through the semi-dark Of daylight under leaden clouds, emit No sound—in physics terms—from forceful strokes That Bellows used to paint the grime and grit He juxtaposed with grass and trees, to coax Enchantment out of gloom ... But don't you hear Rails clanking, plumes of hissing steam, the spray In hurried footsteps, and a neigh? The mere Veracity of physics can't gainsay Eyes predisposed to hear as well as see: Rain On The River captures sounds for me! Mike Mesterton-Gibbons Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. ** Ledge The path splits like a river stitching the lampposts together below a fractal stack of boulders, chunky rubs of color off the brush and the shoulder below that threatens to smear towards fall like a spaghetti strap that tumbles down the precipice and reminds me that most days your bowlegs take retreating steps far beyond my sympathies or sightlines. Still, I think of you as mine rich as the emerald grass, some assurance smogging fog to the sea like a train’s cushion of salt along the city cliff to a metropolitan maze that mocks our mis-remembered love cage with its multiples of ribs twigging out like the world’s first dawn etching their way through morning, through dock posts and floating debris to some other side where, just passing from this view, I might imagine you. Sarah Wyman Sarah Wyman lives in the Hudson Valley where she writes and teaches about literature and the visual arts. She co-facilitates the Sustainability Learning Community and teaches poetry workshops at Shawangunk Prison. Her poetry books are Sighted Stones (FLP 2018) and Fried Goldfinch (Codhill 2021). ** Double Vision: Looking at George Bellows' Rain on the River George Bellows is much better known posing punch-drunk palookas, pounding each other's guts, and keeping their smashed-nose faces pointed to the bloody canvas. But here is something that feels like a left hook, its visual violence aligned in a sharp assemblage of slanted lines, paralleling the distant, blurred embankment, with the mud-coloured flat river under the toxic chemical clouds. Along its length are some warehouses with a short and empty pier sticking out.. Nearby is a cartman, scavenging coal. And in the central artery is a train, pulling its filled container cars along. Rain-soaked, glistening paths, shaped like a wavering divining-rod, are where one itinerant figure is strolling alone. So we see this little drama as it unfolds, below a platform of fractured stone slabs, painted with thick daubs of gray and brown. They are as rough as those spent boxers he drew in broad strokes of dark and light, smudged on paper from a charcoal stick that congealed the smoke from cheap cigars that filled the cheering mouths of boxing fans. But here a single freight train lumbers along, with plumes like a punch in my double vision. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a poet who has been writing for the last fifty years. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Ekphrastic Challenges. He lives now amidst Amish farmland in central Ohio. ** Love and Trains I took my first train ride when I was in college. My first air flight, too. But train trips became my staple, whether to New York City for the museums or to Washington to visit my oldest friend at school. I loved the noises, the shuddering car speeding on tracks, the tucking away of bags in a compartment above my head. I knew every view and vista from the Yankee Clipper, knew when the spectacular sparkle of Long Island Sound would appear, and when we would sit, steaming and hissing in New Haven as Amtrak switched the power source and the lights went dark. More than the lights of a city or the dark cave of a station, I loved the dirty, tired backyards of the cities and towns the train swept through. I saw their sad parts and sometimes the ok parts. I loved the angles of intersection in a small town, when the train was raised high above a main street, running past the corners of old brick buildings with what appeared to be inches to spare. Leaning against the glass, tired of my book, I loved looking at the sections that ran along water the most. We were perilously close to the river or ocean, so close we could tip in if the train jumped the track. Were we? Was I catastrophizer? I had many hours to contemplate scenarios on many trips, and my thoughts often drifted towards emergency exits and how to pop the windows open, if necessary. The backyards of houses and the centres of small towns, with their carved gazebos in tiny parks, were my delight. Why run a train so close to where I imagined a Fourth of July concert would happen? Why did people have so many sheds at the end of the backyard? Why did people dump decades of trash by the side of the tracks? Conversely, what compelled people to garden down to the very edge of the cinders and rails, flush again the flimsy fence where their daffodils or daylilies blossomed and brightened view? I have considered these things for decades, riding on the train. Today, I await my ride at a stop on the west-bound commuter rail. No real station at this stop. Just an overhang, barely a shelter, but with the added convenience of an LED sign declaring the time of arrival. The noise from the highway on the other side of the fence is persistent and thrumming. I look down the long straightaway of track and watch the train draw near. Without the cement platform that surrounds trains in a station, I marvel at how tall it is, an imposing engine of transportation. I hoist myself up steps steeper than those I remember, up and into the car on the left, uncrowded at this early hour on a Saturday morning. I shuffle in, gracelessly, and thump myself down by the window, my bags at my feet. And smile a little smile. I am headed to a college town an hour from where I live to visit the man I am in a relationship with, a post-divorce romance for the both of us, a second chapter we arrived at through circuitous routes and painful endings of love and sadness and rupture. Around me, late night college revelers are headed back to their schools, very large coffees in hand and tattered backpacks on the floor. Singletons are intent on their phones, a few riders slumped, asleep already. It is 10:20 a.m. We start, and I rest my forehead against the glass. The Washington Street Whole Foods slips by, Abbotts and its freezers of ice cream and gallons of fudge sauce. The 1507 gains cruising speed and I am passing the industrial sections of tidy suburban towns who have the space and inclination to hide their parks and recs department by the tracks, to allow children’s gyms and Dunkin Donuts to set up near the train crossings. I cannot read, not when I can relearn the geography of towns I know well. I am smiling now because I feel no different from the 19-year-old heading to New York City, huddled in a trendy long coat that was not warm, on a 6:32 a.m. commuter rail in February with no heat and no dining car from which to purchase a hot drink. It is thrilling and it is freedom and it is new and different, and I feel that now as much as I ever did. Barbara Selmo Barbara Selmo earned an MFA from The John Hopkins Writing Seminars. She has been a member of writers’ groups over the last 10 years. In 2021, she joined a Grief Writing group with Diane Zinna and went on to participate in three month-long, daily writing circles Zinna led. Barbara has worked with Rita Zoey Chin, Dorian Fox, and Zinna, all of whom have been extraordinary. Recent publications include “The Gravity of Love” (Dorothy Parker’s Ashes) and “Lunchables” (The Sun.) A craft piece is forthcoming in Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life after Loss (Diane Zinna, Columbia University Press, 2024). ** Boxing Clever A player courted, basket, base, though chose that ball, art students league, this radical of ashcan school waxed lyrical from left of field. What drove to brush ’fore graduate, reject sport scout, leave commerce part, withdraw athletics, focal point of painting as his primal call? It was the urban working class of city grime in real rough, from boxing ring of gruff appeal, atrocities of gruesome scenes. Dissenter - Wesley middle name - he stood for lines, unpopular; supporting war against the Hun, defending those against the same. How dare he paint what had not seen? His quick response to critics’ form - ‘for had no ticket’ - sportsman talk - Da Vinci absent, upper room. For illustrator, books, the norm to craft response from written word; so seasoned ethics, politics, he framed stark, dark, reality. If river, rain and misty steam were all ingrained, washed over work, then harsher life must be revealed in lithograph or oily truth. From elementary blackboard chalks ’twas class controlled his pupillage; iconoclast up till sad end, until life ruptured far too young. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Swimming Prohibited Due to Poor Water Quality. When I take my glasses off, everything looms in soft focus, like distant cliffs shrouded in the mist-grey of what everyone who looks at them is thinking at the time. Once a thought is born, like each bloom of smoke from a steam train’s funnel, where does it go? When I look closely at life, the snaking paths and flat green pastures of it glitter in my eye. It’s easy not to see the bent and breaking backs of men and the overburdened cart horse; the trees stripped of leaves and blackened by fire long extinguished by hard rain. A river’s clean water turns from blue to the yellow-green of bile draining from the hepatic ducts of our homes and factories. Birds have flown away and a flower wouldn’t dare to raise its face. The jetty crumbles and the fish float belly up. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda lives and writes poetry in Lake Tabourie, NSW, Australia in traditional Yuin country, and enjoys seeing her poetic work published in various literary spaces. ** Progress Slingshot Riverside Park paths glide through high grass as Vanderbilt’s New York Central debouches Hudson River view. The park itself, not so innocent. In the name of conservation, eminent domain claimed country homes of Old New York. A pedestrian bears the strain, braves the stain of progress, an umbrella useless against the gilded drumbeat of time. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Tiferet, Rust + Moth, and other literary journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Hudson Overlook This Hudson overlook, Exposed and frigid, Might discourage another, But not me. Compulsion burns. Glazed schist, Impastoed brine-- I will snatch this place out of time And pin its soul to canvas. Art with muscle. Give me hulking and lurching-- Punchable smog, Gouts of gunmetal soot. Down below, a few desperate souls Collect gleanings of coal-- Concentrated, impacted grime As if sublimed from smut of air My stiff brush grasps the cold mood-- Dapping across canvas Leaving negative spaces of white-- Perfect weird twin of hoar on paths below My fingers crack and bleed now, But a bit of blood cuts the umber nicely And beefs up coastal verge Under beaten copper trees. In time it grows dark, and I pack up. Not that my painting is finished. My work is never finished. It is a held breath —until it hurts. Anna Gallagher Anna Gallagher earned a bachelors degree in English and a masters degree in liberal arts from University of Delaware. She has enjoyed reading poetry all her life. After retirement she has tried some new challenges, including poetry writing! ** leaving behind I looked back for the last time on the best of times standing naked bare and vulnerable like trees in Autumn. Marc Brimble Marc lives in Spain and apart from drinking tea and hanging around near the sea, he teaches English. ** Painting the Future The Hudson is cloaked in smoky yellow, its surface awash in smog and steam as if the rocks, trees and urban sprawl are squeezing life from the city’s tide that I have loved since I was a child. So I paint, my easel perched on a ledge as I scrape my rage across the canvas. I conjure a future of oily pollution and hang it in Paris on a gallery wall. What do you see? Art or a warning? Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, andchapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet or on her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk ** Rain on the River To cut the world to pieces – sort the past to the left the future to the right leave the bare boulders to the present, the winding path, its empty benches, the soaked green, those trees harsh with branch and twig and the steam billowing from yesteryears’ locomotive all will leave our sight forever – as now will turn into then. Barbara Ponomareff Barbara Ponomareff is a retired child psychotherapist, writer and occasional painter and translator. Her poetry, memoirs and short stories have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. She has published two novellas: A Minor Genre and In the Mind’s Eye and is very much drawn to ekphrastic writing. Barbara lives in southern Ontario within walking distance to Lake Ontario. ** How to Capture Dreich on Canvas Rain falls. Rain always falls here. The hungry river is nourished, fattened by the constant fall. The emerald field of the park is sodden and saturated, its path gleaming like a silver tributary as lone walkers bob along, umbrellas dragging like sails. The droplets enliven a train's steamy plume, a dragon hissing its progress through spindles of winter trees bending in the breeze. The same gust spritzes my face with drizzle, glazes it like the gleaming granite boulders I stand behind. The grey river is not quite in flood, girded by the heavy iron of the railway track and the sparse trees enduring this dreich downpour. I know the rain is needed, that it is part of life. The water cascading from the sky to the land, into the river, is a cycle, ancient, inescapable. The river was here before the park, before the city now crowding along its banks. It carries not just today's waters but all the rains, the storms, the mists and mizzles from the lands it has already crossed, carries on towards the sea, to the ocean. I, too, add to this ensemble as salt teardrops slide down my face. Like the rain clouds I have no choice but to let the drops flow, let them mingle with the rain, flow out to the sea. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands. Having been born and raised in Northern Ireland she's seen a lot of rain during her lifetime. She's had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review Challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print. ** The Way Forward The necklace of railcars whisper in metallic clicks before belching out clouds of white smoke. Thick cotton mists silhouette grey the glitter of distant buildings. The river, at the touch of the pale sky, wakes alive in golden tints of a fading summer. Bituminous realities litter the ochre banks, while men with cracked lips, worn hands, stoop to scavenge for an answer to their tired drizzle of prayers. Tall trees with bare branches, gleaming barks sentinel the rain-slicked change of winds. Through the endless carpet of emerald green, a silver road meanders, all the way up to the rocks of glistening hope. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Star 82 Review, Panoply Zine, Visual Verse, Quill & Parchment, Shotglass journal, Sparks of Calliope, Tiger Moth Review, The Sunlight Press, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. Her microchaps A Single Moment and Purple have been published by Origami Poems Project. Her work has been nominated for the 2023 Best Spiritual Literature. ** Thoughts On Rain on the River, by George Bellows This is American rain on an American River, not European Renaissance rain grand old deluge falling on sunshine Cathedrals, but dirty American rain on a muddy brown yellow river gray snow sludge train tops flowing through the heartland, this is America stripping off its shortpants and declaring this is us this US with ashcan underbelly and smoke clogged skies and by God pride of mud green brushstroke landscape and working folk small like beasts along the shore, beauty in the common experience thankful for our uniqueness until the epoch noble vision strips burned out forests of green and souls drown in squalid rivers and artists like Bellows spin in their graves. Daniel W. Brown Daniel W. Brown began writing poetry as a senior. At age 72 he published his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. world. Daniel has been published in various journals and anthologies, and he has hosted a youtube channel Poetry From Shooks Pond. He was also included in MId-Hudson's Arts Poets Respond To Art in 2022-23 and writes each day about music, art and whatever else captures his imagination. ** Perspective
"...thousands of feet above the Brenner Highway, we began to slide down the air quietly as a snowflake... the plane in a long slip like a scimitar curve, the ground rising up to meet us, the trees growing larger, focusing automatically, as in a microscope..." "Italian Days,"* Charles Wright Where did the rain stop and the river begin? In English, it is said that landscape means both the land itself and a painting of the land, that "scape" means "scope," the way an artist balances in an ethereal world, high above the scene below recreating (or embellishing) mountains and waters with an inner eye as the composition moves forward, the river parallel to a train, like a belt girding the painted earth, its trees and verdant grass (greener in the rain) and the rocky ledges of Riverside Park. As a natural setting is altered by art, Bellows moves beyond his earlier work -- "River-Front On A Hot Day" -- a canvas where tenement children strip away their clothing for a swim in the Hudson, waters that become static in "Rain On The River" as if a primal microcosm on canvas attests to New York, the way it appeared when Henry Hudson's ship, the Half Moon, discovered a body of water in the New World its boundary-territory explored by indigenous people, the Mohawks. Otherwise untouched, and ripe for the future, Riverside became a path for the Hudson Railroad (originally the Hudson-Mohawk line) its 20th century destiny to pass the Park's Cherry Walk, to carry cargo past trees, the Sakura, their petals like pink snow -- a gift from Japan -- where art can look down, from the right to the left (one could say east to west) the way the morning sun rises, although it's a grey day today, in Riverside Park. The dock below the railroad seems to disappear in fog that envelops the other side of the river, a thick veil over mountain-like shapes so Bellows' canvas resembles, in its perspective, Hokusai's "Great Wave" a wood block print where Mt. Fuji, bedded between the cresting waves is so far back in the picture, it looks like a mountain in miniature its size like the cap of an otherworldly being -- a gnome, perhaps -- who can guard any treasure buried underground...and at the end of Bellows' dock where my perspective changes, as it always does, to love while white steam bellows from the train engine -- transport to where my heart has been. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp has been honored many times by the Ekphrastic Challenge. Her book, When Dreams Were Poems, explores the relationship of words to art and nature. *She could locate only an auditory copy of Charles Wright's "Italian Days" -- what is a poem without a page? The name of the Hudson Railroad, owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt, was changed to The Hudson River and New York Railway. ** Just a Job After ten years as a freight brakeman in Atlanta, I got laid off last week. Nothing personal, they told me. In Washington, even Hoover said things were bad. In August, Jane and I got married and moved into a one-room basement apartment. In October came Rose, our baby girl. Now, two months later, I lost my job. “I’ll look up North,” I said, as Jane sat on the edge of our bed. I’d heard that trainmen were needed there. “I’ll send money home.” “Promise me you’ll stop drinking, too.” Rose suckled on Jane’s breast. “It’s me or the bottle, like I’ve told you. Now we have a baby.” “I promise.” It was easy for me to say. I’d told her that lots before. When I arrived in New England, the yardmaster hired me on the spot. The rail workers that milled around his office grumbled. They likely wanted a friend to get the job, not me with my Southern accent. Afterward, I walked up a hill in a park and stood on some rocks. In the December rain, I looked at where I’d be working. The paper mill next to the river was big, but the nearby rail yard looked small. On the midnight shift, the engineer, conductor, and another brakeman joshed among themselves, but they didn’t speak much with me. They needed to see what kind of brakeman I was, I guessed. The conductor and I huddled at the top of the lead track that led downhill into the yard. With his lantern, he examined his switch list that gave information on the cars. “Whoa…lookee here. Three hopper cars. Coal. Haven’t seen it in years.” Sleet pelted our faces, and he cleared his throat. “Ride these into Track Three. It’s empty. After fifteen car lengths, tie ‘em down with a hand brake.” He put his gloves on. “Careful now. Another crew’s working on the other end of Three. It holds only ninety-two cars.” He returned to the engine. As the three cars started to coast, the rails groaned under their weight. On the rear car’s icy raised platform, I gripped the brake wheel. These three squat New York Central cars were heavy. Rain that day had saturated every chunk of coal in the open cars. Slushy flakes cut my visibility to a few car lengths. As I entered Three, snow-capped logs on flatcars on Tracks Two and Four whirred by. We were rolling at fast clip. That was okay. I’d done this lots before. But not in winter. At night. In a strange yard. Adrenaline flickered in my gut. In a minute or so, I’d be done and would walk back to the engine. I’d chug some calming whiskey from the pint bottle in my pant pocket. It’d be my first drink since leaving Atlanta. After ten car lengths into Three, I started to spin the brake wheel. I wasn’t used to wearing a heavy winter coat and such thick gloves. The brake shoes clamped on the wheel. It slid, as smoke and sparks spewed and screeched. If I got off and abandoned the cars, they’d only go faster. They’d kill men at the other end of Three. I’d get fired, or worse. But I’d promised Jane that I’d send money. I sprinted on icy ballast rock, over crossties, through sparks and steel-on-steel smoke, with only a few feet of clearance to the boxcars on Two. I was now at least forty car lengths into Three. These monsters wouldn’t stop. On the second car, I spun the brake wheel. Same thing! The sparks, smoke, and screech only doubled. We were going even faster. I raced to my final hope, the third and lead car. Wire from a car on Two snagged my sleeve. I stumbled but regained my footing. I climbed to the car’s ice-crusted handbrake and spun it into a blur. I was at least eighty cars deep into Three. In seconds, I’d crash. The cars slowed to a stop. The screech and sparks had halted, but acrid fumes began to blanket the ground, as the wheels pulsated with heat. I staggered into breathable air and sat on a rail on Two. I’d be able to send money home, after all. “Who’s there?” A lantern poked through the sleeting night. I had no breath left. “We’re…workin’ on…” I filled my lungs. “…the other end of the yard.” “Yeah, we’re on this end.” The brakeman pointed with his lantern beam. “We heard a helluva racket. Cars’ brakes must have frozen up. Then nothing.” A few car lengths from the coal hoppers stood black tank cars. “They’re…heavier than they look.” Gradually, I caught my breath. “That wet coal…almost got away from me.” Shaken, I walked back to the engine. “We need to go back into Three and drag the coal cars back to this end of the yard,” I said. “I was worried you couldn’t stop them.” The conductor shined his lantern on the switch list. “Says here they weigh a lot.” He looked up. “More than cars with lumber we usually see for the mill.” He glanced again at the list. “I didn’t check their weight, till after you’d started riding them into Three.” When the engine stopped near the coal cars, the conductor and I got off and stepped into the lingering smoke. He looked around, bent over to touch a rail, but recoiled. “Still hot.” He shook his head “Sorry. I had no idea. How…how did you stop ’em?” “Been doin’ this for ten years.” “Make the coupling and let’s get out of here.” The conductor got back on the engine. While hidden from the others, I climbed up a car ladder, reached into my back pocket, and tossed the unopened bottle onto the coal. “What was that?” The conductor flicked on the cab light when I returned to the engine. “Sounded like somethin’ broke.” Not broken, kept. “When’s payday? I need to send money home.” Bill Wilburn After college, Bill Wilburn worked as a news reporter for four years. He left as an Associated Press Writer to begin law school and a career as a lawyer. Bill has written scores of professional articles for law reviews and journals. He also freelanced op-ed pieces for The Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Times Herald, the Baltimore Sun, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Bill has written novels, short stories, and comic pieces. He is working on a memoir. Bill speaks fluent German, and lives with his wife in Chevy Chase, Maryland. ** Hudson River, 1903 Under a fog-shrouded landscape, I sit here on that granite ledge above Riverside Park where we spent endless hours in conversation. In tight embraces we witnessed bellowing puffs of dark gray smoke obscure a locomotive’s journey on the New York Central route, a journey I had hoped you would never take. Today, a bank of rain swollen clouds vies for my attention while a restless wind adds music to the day, reminds me of sad melodies we often heard. From this solitary post near two mature white birch, my mind recaptures moments we shared years ago. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019) copies are available [email protected]. His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word (Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He is a full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** Muddy Trails Alone is the sound of rain, spatter melting away- and the stories not left behind. The purpose is here and the purpose is now in swathe by the mossy cliffs- a crow caws at start of the day, definite as death. Where no one walks, the ground orchids span- as yet breathing, hopeful as yet. Journey through stone walls guiding the roadway into western ghats, the truth of muddy trails. Tunnel ahead 500 metres. Alone are the dreams and tales of belief- the placard reads ‘Mr. Alok’ at Pune airport, now as forty-eight years ago. A cloud burst striking weary waters in a youthful escapade. Abha Das Sarma Author's Note: My brother Alok, who passed away nine months ago, had gifted me my first flight ticket, for Poona (now renamed as Pune). An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Life As It Is From a craggy ridge slabs of slate grim and dark bare black branches stand guard a freight train trails clouds of steam a jetty leads into ghostly waters Horse pulling cart of coal scavanged from the littered foreshore boats lost in mist on the far shore loom wharves and warehouses rain dripping over man, beast,and machinery Gritty, urban scene Muted colours - greys, browns and black stark realism yet a sense of hard lived lives a picture of life as it's lived Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge who really enjoys this artist's ability to combine gritty realism with a sense of beauty in ordinary, working lives. ** The Spot I have been hiding in this hillside spot since I was seven years old. I discovered it when a group of neighbourhood boys rallied together a round of hide and seek. While they searched, I scrutinized the large men working on the trains. They were powerful and strong, covered in soot and sweat. Those boys never found me and ended up leaving me there as they dispersed at sunset for their homes, and I got my butt whooped for getting home so late and covered in dirt. But I didn’t care. All I cared about was that spot and the trains. I saved that spot just for me. I went every day after school just to watch the trains and their workers. When I got older, I would smoke cigarettes and watch as my puffs mingled with the train’s, making us one. I ended up on those tracks working 12-hour days for the last 21 years. When I would think of it down on the tracks, I would squint up at the spot wondering if there was a small kid who had replaced me there. With a family and house and work, I haven’t found respite at the spot since…well I don’t even know. It’s one of those things that happened in your life one last time, and the occasion seemed so ordinary that it was sure to happen again, but it never does. Like the last time I picked up my son before he got too tall and too independent to need carried around. I have been here every day this week, in my work clothes and carrying a paper bag with a ham sandwich, watching the younger guys still working. I follow their movements, my hand twitches. Tomorrow will be the day I tell my wife. It must be tomorrow, because the day after she’ll be expecting the paycheck to take to the bank. I flick the butt of the cigarette over the edge and light another. Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel.  Farfalla, by Emilio Pettoruti (Argentina) 1961 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 Farfalla, by Emilio Pettoruti. Deadline is August 2, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include PETTORUTI CHALLENGE in the subject line. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, August 2, 2024. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.  Antigone Giving Burial Rites to the Body of Her Brother Polynices, by Marie Spartali Stillman (England) before 1927 Not to Lose Grasp on Fate Dear Antigone, You knew you were born from Troubled parents and tragedy. Tell me What did they tell you When you asked about Your grandparents? Your parents They weren’t Worthy of you. How did it feel being clutched By the sorrowed hands of the one man Who was supposed to protect you? How feeble he was in the end. You did mourn the death of your father But in what way was it any comfort? You lost two brothers To power: Polynices is dead. In mourning you found your freedom. You defied cruelty with courage. You were to be buried alive But you hanged yourself Not to lose grasp on fate Of death you came To death you returned You were bound by destiny But you broke your chains. Mahdi Meshkatee Mahdi Meshkatee is a UK-born, Iranian poet, author, and artist. His translation of the children’s novel Witch Wars by Sibéal Pounder has been published by Golazin Publication Company. His work has been published by October Hill Magazine, Nude Bruce Review, and Inscape Magazine. His writings are a continuity of attempts at decoding himself. ** To Marie Spartali Stillman Regarding Antigone You paint her as generic grace -- her deed more featured than her face -- defiant in defense of rite immoral rule denies to spite those filled wirh fear of death's decay becoming feast as savaged prey for swarm bewinged that tortures those who witness but dare not oppose. unless possessed of special strength by faith that follows to its length the hope that buries in its soul the justice wrought by its control that never shrinks from moment seized to leave such evil unappeased. Post Scriptum So cleverly beneath this scene interred is message left to glean that fame witheld by men begrudged has been denied by gender judged. 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. ** Anorexia I was sent to a cave to starve for this: for throwing ashes over you, a poor man’s burial, brother, but it’s as though I turn the vultures away with my hand each time they arrive to peck your uncovered flesh. I was sent to a cave to starve for this. Anorexia my grief, my thin anger. I wasted away through choice, brother, just as Creon chose to punish you by refusing oils, choral tributes, a crown, swaddling. I sent myself to a cave to starve for this. I chose the sun’s absence, the weight of death falling away from my bones. I chose the one thing that I could control, sister, no matter how loud you whispered they are coming, coming. Who is coming to save us, sister? Not myself. Not you. Not the vultures who are beautiful and hungry. No. No one is coming to take death from us, like a prize. Only I throw the dust. I decide what is enough. Jennifer Harrison Jennifer has published eight poetry collections (most recently Anywhy, Black Pepper, 2018). Two new collections are forthcoming in 2024/2025. Awarded the 2012 Christopher Brennan Award for sustained contribution to Australian poetry, she currently chairs the World Psychiatry Association’s Section for Art and Psychiatry – and loves an ekphrastic challenge. ** Ceremony No mourning bell, no stranger’s deference, no bowed heads or doffed caps, watching the procession through busy streets. No carnations spelling ‘BROTHER’ in capitalised florid woe, no hymns sung off key or hollow platitudes from second cousins. No weak sandwiches and cold tea, no sympathetic faces, no awkward silences in black Sunday best or clutched handbags. Just a darkening sky, where clouds silently rage at insolence and crows screech above mercilessly, declaring, “He is dead”. Stephanie White Stephanie White is a teacher from Nottingham, England. She has recently taken tentative steps into writing and submitting poetry. When not indulging in writing, she is a regular wild swimmer. ** Antigone in Ecstasy and though Oedipus in Spirit with a breasted chest, she is a heaving sister, there, wild, raven waves bound but Standing. Then the heavens open ushering vultures, to feast on shared flesh, wasted bloodlines dried on this broken cliff in these hills, body Rotting. Defiance on her lips. Appleseeds sprinkle down fingertips to this wasted body covered in Rites to curls and shadows. The indecency of a red shawl. Given a type of burial. Ismene, Pleading for time’s wind to lift them. Waiting. Kneeling, in a type of Thaebean anti-prayer. Still, clouds brighten against mountaintop auras beneath smudges of night at end. Heaven’s smoke provokes these, their only arms. Lifting, in a rapture of tragedy. C.E. Layne C.E. Layne enjoys and applauds characters who aggressively surrender to being mediocre. A long, exhausted, and failed perfectionist, C.E. Layne now only overanalyzes herself, by herself, in a room with a couple of windows and a great view of a dark lime green swamp, now called A Lake. She graduated with a BA in English Lit from a university in Las Vegas, got a Master’s in business to compensate for lost time, and has yet to be published. C.E. Layne participated in PocketMFA’s Spring Fiction Cohort and is thrilled to be invited to participate in the Summer Residency. She’s loved by those who gave her life, those who keep it watered, fed, and worth something more, and relied upon by two dogs for food, shelter, sun, and belly rubs. ** Ismene’s Dream The caverns of her mind The darkness of the night The dream she can’t escape She turns her head away One sister chose the Gods One sister chose the King One sister chose to die One sister chose to live She sees a single gravestone The dream she can’t escape The darkness of the day The caverns of her mind Kathleen Cali Chicago-born and Midwest raised, Kathleen resides at the Jersey Shore. Her poetic interests include formal and modern poetry and haiku. Always the student, she enjoys poetry writing workshops and working with her local library. Other interests include historical fiction and photography. Kathleen enjoyed a career as a senior auditor and educator and served as an assistant professor of business following receipt of her MBA. Technical writing and editing were a major part of her profession; now she uses her skills to craft poetry. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review; her haiku was published in her local community’s magazine. ** Dreams of Death on a Daily Basis I dream of dead people as if they were still alive, as if I hadn’t seen them in caskets, hadn’t noticed their body-shells without souls.. I hugged my father in Tuesday’s dream, the padded filling of his jacket, the Ivory scent of his skin mixed with vanilla scent of tobacco. I waited for my mother in Wednesday’s dream, stomping my foot while she smoked her Kent to the stub, her jungle red nail polish matching the filter tip’s lipstick stain. I grieved my twin in Sunday’s dream. We were born on a Sunday. She perished in a car accident that hasn’t happened. Yet. Like a carrion crow, the accident is waiting, just waiting. When it happens, I will give the eulogy. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Chicken Fat (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her poetry has also appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Vine Leaves Literary, Tiferet, and other publications. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website is www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Daughter of Oedipus My words become wind--ancient and unintelligible-- like a hidden spell inside a tattered scroll written in a forgotten language. I do not know if I speak of regret or defiance—either way the rituals entrap me in endings-- refusing to release me, uncursed. 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/. ** The Cleanest of Ends Antigone knew a thing or two about death and burial, the disposal of bodies. She knew that the cleanest of ends is to be stripped of flesh right down to the soul to be released to soar. I didn’t know why the birds were circling the house of the neighbor lady who lived alone. They swooped in circles around her yard, settling now and then in her orange trees or on the antenna on her roof and on the clothesline where her clean sheets dry but not taken in and folded still flapped. The birds had been drawn by what the neighbors could not detect, closed up as they were in their AC. It wasn’t till someone, alerted by the birds, called the authorities to come get those birds out of the neighborhood and dispose of what she had already discarded. But doing so robbed her of the cleanest of ends. Antigone knew and prepared her brother’s body for the coming of the birds who would release his soul to soar. Gretchen Fletcher Gretchen Fletcher won the Poetry Society of America's Bright Lights/Big Verse competition and was projected on the Jumbotron while reading her winning poem in Times Square. One of her poems was choreographed and performed by dance companies in Palm Beach and San Francisco, and others appear in datebooks published in Chicago by Woman Made Gallery. Her poetry has been widely published in journals including The Chattahoochee Review, Inkwell, Pudding Magazine, Upstreet, Canada’s lichen, and more. Gretchen has led writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. Her chapbooks, That Severed Cord and The Scent of Oranges, were published by Finishing Line Press. ** She doesn't know her name is Ismene. She slices her hand up through the air, The heel of her hand upwards, palm flat, As if she were a butler on Downton Abbey Delivering a silver tray of sherry glasses. She can feel her warm tears unclogging Last night's mascara. The sisters’ shapes Have a rhythm of roundness - a Matisse dance. Her sister was always more angular, Hip bones and clavicle jutting out accusingly. They call it complicated grief as if grief Wasn't complicated enough… Already… She brings her lunch to sit in front of the picture. To let her mind detach like a placenta From the uterus. Some of the dark shapes are hair, some Of the dark shapes are crows, some of The crows are flying, some of the crows Are dead, with their feathers pulled out. It's some kind of ritual. She unwraps her sandwiches. Almost Each day now the meal deal gets more expensive. * The younger sister has hair woven with orange threads, Writhing in the sunshine and wind, made from the same paint as the cloth covering the cold flesh. The fabrics repelling each other like North North magnets. The younger sister looks away. She's never Been able to take life head on, the full force Of truth in her face. She needs to hold her hand over her features, To hide in the shade, more of a fresco Than a statue. Her skin is painted with petals from the hillside. Only momentarily borrowed. The crisps sound very loud in the white space Of the gallery. The crunch crunch awkward In her jaw and ears. But there's nobody Else in the room to mind. And the figures In the frame are held firm in their own circuit Of electricity, which does not include her. * She will sit and eat her sandwich and think About her sister, quite separate from the painting. With her office clothes and fading hangover, From drinking too long into the night alone. Red wine has always made her weep, after more than half a bottle. Why do we all persist in doing things that are bad for us. And the brother lays cast down on the rocks. Crows’ feathers scattered over the cloth on His stomach. Sky is gathering night together quite quickly And soon the picture will get too dark to see. When she gets back to work she won't remember The faces. Just the circle they made: turning together And twisting apart. Saskia Ashby Saskia Ashby is an artist/poet who engages in a wide range of creative activity and encourages other people to enjoy exploring, expressing and experimenting with art. She really enjoys seeing so many perspectives from people to the same image in these Ekphrastic Challenges. ** Tragic Theatre The Floating Pavilion, Oneonta NY, 9 pm performance Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver. ― Sophocles, Antigone 1. The stage is raised round and oaken -- a wheel on which fate turns the universe with another version of Antigone's death. Haunted by her brother's burial (and pain beyond the ancient plot), the young actress kneels at the center-- hypnotic with a rope of leaves around her head. Her hair straight and shining like the dagger in her slim hands. 2. Poised and perfumed with bath oil, she prepares to stab the heart -- until a bird flies in disrupting the act, its classic resolve. Dust flares in the light along with iridescent wings. A trembling darkness. Unlike the heroine, her own soul is still in dispute wanting its body back, and uses this place, this raftered ark to panic. Wendy Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, diverse landscapes, women in conflict and ancient cultures. Over the years, she has been published in an assortment of journals both on-line and in print. Among them: Strange Horizons, Liminality, Coffin Bell, Eternal Haunted Summer, The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, Stirring A literary Collection, The Orchards Journal, The Copperfield Review and Sun Dial Magazine. Her most recent work has appeared in Indelible Magazine and Songs of Eretz. ** The Penumbra Dark schooner clouds unfurl their sails above the roiling sea, a tempest sweeps her turbid mind, leaving a calm eye, a determination, resolution. Here the chorus sings, here the crows rise, black exclamations anchoring their warning cries, augurs of could, not will, they foretell war, death, but also the coming dawn. They call to the furies; they call to Athena and Aphrodite. They are the presagers, more than what they seem. Antigone ignores them, the scene Is set, she follows through, a pawn-- What is fated? What is freewill? Choose, If you can-- always, always listen to the crows. Merril D. Smith Merril D. Smith lives in southern New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in publications, including Black Bough Poetry, Acropolis, The Storms, and Sidhe Press. Her full-length collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was a Black Bough Press featured book. Find me: @merril_mds and merrildsmith.org ** Antigone Speaks I Smuggled by night from Thebes, his body—limp, pallid-- sprawls slack across a rock beribboned with kelp. Fearful, dear Ismene cannot bear to look: turns tear-stained face towards the north. In this brewing storm, ravens claw the wind, croak messages of harsh revenge, of rage. II I sprinkle soil, first full rites for him I loved: let fall burned petals of roses: dark shreds. Traitor, King Creon named him. If he was that, then am I also venal. But hear me: Polynices was true to Thebes. His spirit now belongs to Zeus. III Ismene! Up and dry your eyes! Even in death, our darling brother triumphs. Lizzie Ballagher Ballagher's work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in the UK, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. She enjoys experimenting with formal structures as well as free verse: is particularly interested in how a poem sounds when read aloud. ** Inquest The Theban royal family, Jocasta, Oedipus, their four children, Antigone, Ismene, Eteocles and Polynices, and Antigone’s lover/betrothed/husband are all dead or exiled. The Queen’s brother Creon is King, creating a new line. All because of bad luck and tragic coincidences. But what if the story of sphynxes and riddles, of queens given as prizes, of regicide and incest, self-enucleation and voluntary exile (which, if we are honest, does seem rather far-fetched), was a fiction, a calumnious smoke screen to endorse a coup d’état, an upheaval in custom, social organization and religion? What if Jocasta was Queen and ruler, not a prize, and what if Laius was her old king doomed to die when his time was up, at the hand of a young pretender, and what if Oedipus, the young pretender, was simply an ambitious young man? And what if Queen Jocasta, because she loved him, when his time was up, offered Oedipus blinding instead of death? And what if her brother Creon, inspired by new-fangled ideas that replaced the matriarch with a patriarch, saw an opening for himself? What if he killed Jocasta Queen, his sister, and suggested to Eteocles and Polynices, Jocasta’s sons, that they share the throne? And what if he suggested it because he knew his nephews, and that they would never agree to share? And of course, he was right. They quarrelled and killed one another, or were killed. And what about Antigone, daughter of Jocasta, who should have been the next Queen? What if Creon offered her the choice, exile with her father or death? And what if, after Polynices and Eteocles quarrelled and killed one another or were killed, when Antigone returned with her lover/betrothed/husband, Haemon, it was not to bury Polynices, not to praise him, but to claim her crown? And what if that was the reason Creon had her killed? Because funnily enough, after all the tragic killings and blinding and hanging and fratricidal wars, Creon was the only one left. Jane Dougherty Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry, Ekphrastic Review and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses. ** As the Crows Fly The crows unfold their crepelike wings. Wise birds, they know it is time to go. I ask, so soon? My incense still burns; I perform my rites, I perfume his body with herbs. My eyes linger on the wavy hair tumbling back on the slab where he lies. My fingers recall its softness and mourn his pulsing, warm caress. But life grasps my arm and guides me away, to where the crows lead: past wildflowers, through valleys. I live, and so I must rise. Dearest one, this is goodbye. In every bond we humans form, loss has been preordained. Every hello implies a farewell, just as every first kiss imparts a chill. Catherine Reef Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in several online and print journals. She has published more than forty nonfiction and biographical works on subjects including Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. A graduate of Washington State University, Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York. ** Tragic Flaw Ravens prophetically drew the sky low squashed the lush below chased away any foe and ambushed the earth in limbo winging wildly for the final blow of a twins brothers battle throw. It happened long ago but at another epoch discord Spartali recaptured Sophocles’ yearning by drawing the suspense line along the pressing glow of the true twins throw – that of human and heaven, which Antigone turns into a shrine for horizons with divine intimations. She rose to the sacred call disregarded the royal protocol ignored the croaking ravens and laid her brother to rest under a handful of dust – her brave reverence to the law of the divine above that of man despite the suicidal chain it inflicted as an outcome. Logistics for heroes. For literary pundits – a tragic flaw. For dreamers – a contradiction in terms: for how come upholding the divine can be a tragedy and not eleison! Something must be seriously wrong if earth is estranging itself from the sky-high worth since each inch in the universe is appointed for the precise purpose of sustaining gravity of life just right. Take for free Spartali’s poised firmament descending to its climax low so we can reclaim our divine flame! But take not for granted its devout herald doing that with bare hands – Antigone – looming large in her art of right honorable antagonistic catharsis – not a tragic hero but a goddess not a mourning sister but a star not an improbable bride but a bloom if only one could break the gloom of the man-made fatal flaw and see the twin flow of heaven and heart mutually disguised meandering mild on our own daily battlefield. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems have been frequently honoured by TER and its Challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021. ** So Spoke Antigone I am afraid for what I do, The world about me is dark and challenging. I feel the black clouds and thunder, which wracks the very rocks beneath my feet, speak of doom. The crows, scavengers of flesh my own flesh and blood, ravage my brother. Is he to travel to the edge of the world, to the Fields of Asphodel to wander a grey spirit bereft for all eternity of the rites of burial? How small, how ignoble seems obedience compared to Justice, to know that even in the face of death you did what is right. My sister pulls me back to my woman’s role that little world of spinning, servants and child bearing. I raise my handful of dust in farewell, in blessing but in defiance too. You will meet my spirit, Polynices, as one who risked all, for that handful of dust. Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a writer from Cambridge, UK, who has long been an admirer of the Pre-Raphaelites but knew little of this artist. It has been an interesting challenge. |
Challenges
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