Archetype
 
The boy, mounted on a white, shaggy, big-as-a-horse, fearsomely tusked, red-eyed,
fire-snorting boar, rides serenely through the heavens of night, Self as dark as the sky,
under the blood moon of awakening, full, round, mature, and whole, before them the blue
flower of wisdom, four eyes of insight and four arms of power, the number of completion.
In harmony, they move through the night of the unconscious, the Shadow faced, tamed,
and harnessed, unconscious made conscious, reborn through the labours of the ancient sage.
 
I dream of this dream of archetypes of night while i clean grimy salt and snow off my auto
and the day is full of the Shadows of beastly leaders.
 
Benny Charles Marcus
 
Benny Charles Marcus is a mostly unpublished poet and retired professor of sociology currently studying literature, consciousness, and the self. He lives in Willistown, PA, with his lovely wife, Marian.

​Join us for a unique experience as we explore the poetry, music, and art of Canadian legend Leonard Cohen. Cohen was once known as the "godfather of gloom," penning some of the most stunning poetry and song lyrics of our time. We will discuss Cohen's themes of human relationships, love and loss, the human condition, faith, and art through his own work and his biography, and take inspiration from his creations and art related to his themes. This two-session program includes feedback on two poems or stories.

If you aren't familiar with Cohen, join us for a journey of discovery. If you're a longtime fan, don't miss this special opportunity for in-depth discussion and creativity.

From Atop This Copper Chalice
 
Bow low, figs and almonds.
Roses, bend your stems. 
I defeated peony, vanquished larkspur, 
left slain pastry snakes in my wake. 
Their blood will slake my thirst.
Defy me at your peril, iris, 
daffodil. You’ll feel my spear 
once I dispatch this insolent tulip.

Tracy Royce

Tracy Royce’s poems have appeared in The Mackinaw, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and ONE ART. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Pushcart Prize, and was selected for Best Microfiction (2026). She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking and watching Richard Widmark films. Find her on Bluesky.

Desert Trash
 
Georgia, draped in black, scans the desert 
in severe absorption of the sun, eyes 
beading beneath her Stetson crown to glimpse
near mounds, far peaks, the telltale 
gleam of bleached bone, antler shed
 
            or skull, pelvis, vertebrae 
            of Diné livestock shot to rot 
            for the colonization of landscape.  
 
She paints, on canvas, the desert’s leavings 
with the velvet intimacy of extraction 
smoothing harsh form, rigid aridity, into 
erotic undulations, sandstone blood-let 
to peach furring the rack-studded sky
 
            pioneering her iconography 
            of omission, her ownership 
            of Diné homeland. 
 
She called them, her treasures, boney trash,
objets d'art deployed in remaking desert 
landscapes free of the living, morphing 
over time into myth, commodity, 
cliché 
            as the Diné endured, endure 
            continuing, as always, home 
            and away, to pray.  
            
Camille LeFevre

​Camille LeFevre crafts poetry and creative nonfiction, and teaches writing workshops on art and place, from her home on the unceded lands of the Hisatsinom, Yavapai, and Apache in Northern Arizona. Her essay, “Body Topography,” published in The Dodge, was selected for the 2026 Best of the Net Anthology. Her first poetry collection, Sandstone and Kin, will be published in Fall 2026. Her work also appears in Poets for Science, wildscape.literary, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Metphrastics, Fugue, Unleash Literary, Electric Lit, Brevity Blog, and other publications. She’s thrilled to have her work, once again, in The Ekphrastic Review.

Female Nude (I Love Eva) 
 
I say she’s naked, but if this is a female 
nude (Pablo Picasso says this is 
a female nude) I’ll try to love and try
to love it. A female nude, 
who the painting might love, isn’t 
Eva, who never stood nude, 
let alone naked, long enough 
for rectangles and lines and half circles. 
A female nude of rectangles and lines 
of half circles of red, yellow, blue, 
orange, green, peach, (this is a boring list), isn’t 
a boring list, but a painting 
Pablo called Female Nude 
(I Love Eva) only 
in French. I don’t love Eva 
or French (like Stein I love American!) or this female 
nude, but Susie, who gets nude 
and loves rectangles of lines and half 
circles and red of orange, yellow, 
green-peach of blue, and who, like most nude 
females or female nudes, 
isn’t Eva. All things 
are shapes and colours deep down 
in the Evas in each of us hanging in frames 
on our museum walls. Our nude faces break 
like plates--a nose here, lips there, one eye
too many--but we want to be 
loved anyway. It’s the same Eva 
from a different angle and it is the same Eva 
from a different angle. It is and it is 
the same love of boring lists 
made beautiful. When I called Susie “Eva,” 
which is better than calling her “Pablo,” she turned 
 into a boring list. But boring 
isn’t boring when it’s a painting, 
and I love her, Susie of Eva, and Pablo 
with his caritas of sand and orange of oil 
and charcoal, and I love her and red 
of yellow of blue of peach of 
green, O, Eva! Eva! Eva! Eva! Eva! 
 
Matt Zambito

This poem first appeared in Another Chicago Magazine  and in the author's book, The Fantastic Congress of Oddities.

Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities, and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances. New poems are forthcoming in Tampa Review, Slipstream, Freshwater Literary Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere, and he’s received awards from the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and the Academy of American Poets. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has lived in Ohio, Idaho, Washington, and New York, where he now resides with his rescue dog, Sadie.
 

​We are pleased to announce a new Zoom reading series! 

​Join us for our second event on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. We have a stellar lineup of ekphrastic contributors. 

Electric Ekphrasis will present five readers each session, with an extra half hour after the readings for audience questions and community conversation.

To sign up, send an email to [email protected]with ELECTRIC EKPHRASIS in the subject line. You'll get a zoom link a few days before each reading.

Free to attend!

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The Fear and Grit of Woman
           
She packs clothing 
made of pine and wenge wood: 
two shirts, a cap, a strand of prayer beads,
and holy book wrapped in cloth.
What lies under grains of fabric?
Is this refugee baggage 
from one woman 
leaving her native country 
a vestige of what’s permitted? 
It’s not that she didn’t know 
someone could pry open
her honey-coloured suitcase
with the quilted lining 
made of heartwood and sapwood,
delve straight through
to her centre. She holds the key
and has scored the grain for narrative. 
Although pine is easier to work with, 
she sands and sands the wenge 
with fine grit paper, 
adds pale stain 
as gold as toasted coconut 
while secrets hide
tucked inside side pockets. 
Her finger traces grain
along seams and collars 
of folded shirts. 
She inhabits tensile strength
embedded in a matrix
of her history and decisions, 
with layers of cambium
fashioned of lignin and cellulose
seeping into beads
she rolls between thumb and finger.
The contrast is the dark pistol 
someone laid outside the suitcase
sanded smoother than a threat.

**

Author's Note:  Some of Abid's suitcases online don't have the weapon included. Her carvings are amazing.

​Instructions from My Mother
  
Safety first. Keep your fingers 
from the edge. Be sure to use 
the insulated trivet beneath the iron 
as it heats
or you’ll scorch the ironing board cover.
 
It’s a joke nowadays, 
“Who does ironing anymore?” 
 
But when I reach for a tablecloth 
scrunched in a drawer 
I sometimes want to iron creases out.
 
When sprucing up my office,                               
I find curtains at IKEA. I think 
the fold lines will come out 
as the fabric hangs. Many months later  
and still sometimes I think 
I’ll fetch the ironing board from upstairs,
slide the flowing white fabric from the rod,
dampen it and iron out the wrinkles. It
would be easy, if I’d only take the time.
 
Ironing used to be a household rite of passage, 
women’s work, like darning socks 
or hemming dresses. 
My mother knew to meld
the household arts of ironing and mending.
 
When she went to work full time,
Mom taught me to sprinkle water
and iron each part of a shirt: 
the front, the side with buttons, 
the side with buttonholes, 
sleeves with the knife crease, 
the cuffs, the back. And finally, 
to finish with a pucker-free collar. 
Mom said a smooth line across 
the shoulder back could make up 
for many imperfections. 
 
I can’t believe 
I’m writing about ironing, 
but by God, this was something 
in life a woman could make go smoothly. 
My modern appliance
emits wet steam at the tap of a button.
But occasionally I plug in 
my mother’s old iron
with the woven cord for little jobs 
that only need, as she would say,
“a lick and a promise.”
It’s the art of display.
Women’s work:
to make the ordinary beautiful.


* "Istri" refers to smoothing iron in Pakistan, and woman/wife in India

​
​Household Adages
 
I am a modern woman.
I do my best to iron 
out life’s wrinkles.
Perhaps only yesterday,
a vibrant CEO mixed 
her metaphors and said, 
“The contract’s ready.
The ball is in their court.
Now it’s just ironing 
out the details.”
 
Everyone knows 
to do a job well 
and get it done pronto,
for we’re all pressed for time.

Mary Ellen Talley

Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have appeared in many journals including Louisville Review, Deep Wild, and Trampoline as well as in multiple anthologies. Her chapbooks are: Postcards from the Lilac City, from Finishing Line Press, Taking Leave from Kelsay Books, and Infusion online at Red Wolf Journal. She resides in Seattle, WA and worked for many years as a school-based speech/language pathologist (SLP.) Her website is www.maryellentalley.com.