 Glory Train, by Ruth Starr Rose (USA) 1951 heirloom lands bound for glory on winged-heel hand-me-downs from high above. the train still tracks this land, chugs on, but the devil shovels coal sometimes. and we sit side by side, barely aware—that we are, or we’ve been, or they were passengers, bound to forget, bound to be taught, bound to remember. bound for glory, almighty inheritance; to wear it, barely aware of it. the land fits our feet for it. shapes us under stairs we can’t see. under stares we can’t see. Hannah Zerai Hannah Zerai is a writer from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She spends most of her time managing the vast and tiny world of chronic illness, bouncing between art projects, and collecting things that really don’t need to be collected. Her writing has appeared in The Mighty, Halfway Down the Stairs, and The Skinny Poetry Journal.  Golden Slippers, by Ruth Starr Rose (USA) 1947
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 Lucky 8: an Ekphrastic Marathon Try something intense and unusual- an ekphrastic marathon, celebrating eight years of The Ekphrastic Review Join us on Sunday, July 16, 2022 for our second annual ekphrastic marathon. This is an all day creative writing event that we do independently, together. Take the plunge and see what happens! Write to fourteen different prompts, poetry or flash fiction, in thirty minute drafts. There will be a wide variety of visual art prompts posted at the start of the marathon. You will choose a new one every 30 minutes and try writing a draft, just to see what you can create when pushed outside of your comfort zone. We will gather in a specially created Facebook page for prompts, to chat with each other, and support each other. Time zone or date conflicts? No problem. Page will stay open afterwards. Participate when you can, before the deadline for submission. The honour system is in effect- thirty minute drafts per prompt, fourteen prompts. Participants can do the eight hour marathon in one or two sessions at another time and date within the deadline for submissions (July 31, 2023). Polish and edit your best pieces later, then submit five for possible publication on the Ekphrastic site. One poem and one flash will win $100 each. Last year this event was a smashing success with hundreds of poems and stories written. Let's smash last year out of the park and do it even better this year! Marathon: Sunday July 16, from 10 am to 6 pm EST (including breaks) (For those who can’t make it during those times, any hours that work for you are fine. For those who can’t join us on July 16, catch up at a better time for you in one or two sessions only, as outlined above.) Story and poetry deadline: July 31, 2023 Up to five works of poetry or flash fiction or a mix, works started during marathon and polished later. 500 words max, per piece. Please include a brief bio, 75 words or less Participation is $20 CAD (approx. 15 USD). Thank you very much for your support of the operations, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review, and the prizes to winning authors. Selections for showcase and winning entries announced sometime in September. Sign up below!  Nothing But Words Here, by Aurailieus (USA) c 2014 Nothing, But The abstract painting hangs on a too-white wall over my computer monitor, mocking, taunting. Nothing But Words Here, it says in ragged blue brushstrokes. I bought it off a local painter at the Emerald Lounge, a skinny downtown bar choked with cigarette smoke and sunrise alcoholics. The painter’s works were featured throughout the bar; only suburban tourists like me bought them. I paid the asking price, no haggling, and pulled it off the greasy faux walnut-paneled wall myself. I carried it to our table full of writers and propped it up on an empty chair; we clinked glasses, admiring. They had come to Florida to speak at a conference and drink. I lived here, so instead of attending an arranged tour of St. Pete Beach (where we were expected to—of all things—write!), I lured this bunch into day drinking at the city’s downtown dives. We stared at the painting, toasting its color, its composition, its words, and applauded our cleverness at having stumbled drunk into a work of art. Drunk, I took it home and hung it over my writing desk. I sought its inspiration when I was blocked. Now we’re hung. It on the wall; I in my chair. Both of us stuck. I sometimes try to figure out what the artist was trying to say with the vertical slashes and corner hash marks. What it means that the colors are so bright and the sentiment so dim. Why his breathy strokes on the front side of the D and back side of the S are painted so lightly that from a certain angle, it seems to read Nothing But Work Here. I stare at it, wondering. But there’s nothing you can know about what an artist intended. They can’t tell you a story that will satisfy your mind. *** I adored the painting before I became nothing. ** Nothing is invisible, everywhere and nowhere, useless, unseen. Nothing is nobody. Nothing has nobody. Nothing had somebody when she was something, but somebody couldn’t bear her being nothing. Somebody couldn’t be expected to care for nothing. To love nothing. The culture, meaning the internet, has strong opinions about nothing. Nothing doesn’t look sick, they say. Nothing looks the same as ever. Nothing acts the same as always. Nothing could be something again if nothing really wanted to. Nothing enjoys a free ride, that’s all. The culture has shade to throw, and it never ever holds back. Sorry, not sorry. The internet may be right. Nothing can’t fight back. Nothing can’t change anything, move anything, love anything—not the way the internet says a thing needs to be changed, moved, loved. The best that nothing can do for the somethings is commit suicide. ** Yet I sit under my abstract painting and stare at the computer monitor, living. I pull a blanket around my shoulders to ward off the opioid shivers and try to work. The cursor blinks and blinks, daring me to touch the keyboard. Daring me to be something. “Nothing but nothing here,” I tell the painting. I write a sentence. Read it. Select all and press delete. I shift my body, put both hands on the keyboard, take them away again. A sudden lightning bolt crashes through my spine. Electric force slams across ragged demyelinated nerves, compelling my arms and legs to jerk and seize. My vision dissolves to an icefall; my teeth ache down to my collarbone. I wait, helpless, until the electricity relents, then towel the sweat from my skin and give up sitting in front of the computer. But I don’t turn it off. I leave the cursor to wait, blinking mindlessly, for my return. As if I’m getting back at it. The memory foam daybed in my office is the only surface soft enough to subdue my body’s complaints. I lower myself onto it and stretch out gingerly, offering a silent prayer to gods I don’t believe in. Outside loom gathering thunderstorms; inside, the monitor shines sleep-confounding blue light onto my empty chair. Clenching my teeth as my body settles, I close my eyes and drift but do not sleep. The painting and I are back in the Emerald Lounge. Dense tobacco smoke stings my eyes to tears, but I see it hanging where I first encountered it: in the back near the restroom. “It’s mine,” I say, starting toward it. I mean to take it off the wall, bring it home, hang it above my desk. It’s mine. Before I can reach it, the painting leaps from the wall, lands on the threadbare burgundy carpeting and begins to shriek. It wrenches its frame first one way and then the other, panting. Rivulets of blue and yellow paint sweat run onto the carpet, under the pool table, behind the bar. The painting grunts and heaves, cursing. Twisting and roiling, its canvas splits horizontally and vertically, tearing a gash from center to stapled spines. It wails, shaking the rafters, rattling the leaded glass windows, and a river of color pours from its ruptured center as it collapses in a heap of shredded fabric and splintered wood. It’s made something! “It’s mine!” I say, pushing past a dozen bleary but intrigued onlookers to kneel beside it. What is it? What will it be in this world? What will it mean? I stare at the wreckage on the floor, but nothing emerges. When I open my eyes, the painting is above my desk, intact. Forever speaking-silent. I groan and pull myself from the daybed, drop into my chair, and tap the mouse to make my word-a-day screensaver disappear. The cursor waits on a white page; I blink back at it and place my fingers on the home keys. Ignoring the turbulence in my spine, I push the air from my lungs and begin again. Unchanged, the painting looks on. Loretta Lynne Finan Loretta Lynne Finan is a neurodiverse writer from a long line of Irish-American yarn spinners. She lives in small town Florida with her musician husband where they spend their days puttering around with DIY home improvement projects and creating art for its own sake.  Foiled Lemon, by Stephen Horton, O.S.B. (England) contemporary Untitled Lemon’s rush: zests like white-water- captured.  Humus by Stephen Horton, O.S.B. (England) contemporary Untitled Portrait of mushrooms, culled from shadows and dark woods: art of deep earth.  Another Day in the Studio, #1, by Stephen Horton, O.S.B. (England) contemporary Not So Still Life When my back was turned the pieces stole into place, quiet as mist in the morning, glamorous as pouting models, all cheekbones, legs and elbows, struck lazy, impeccable poses knowing full well their over- powering gloss and curve, aware that the bottle’s tilt, so vulnerable on the edge of the table, would make us (despite the bristling paint- brush leaning in on the right) long to reach out, handle it, straighten it—make ourselves safe.  Two Sisters Decorate a Cake, by Stephen Horton, O.S.B. (England) contemporary Two Sisters Decorate a Cake The painter’s art captures the silence of the sun: I hear the soft play, quiet rapture of sugary girls as they create. Morning’s long, bright glaze shines on soft, child-arms, on gleaming clouds of gold hair-- I wonder at this scene: girls so intent, light so warm, small fingers so itchy with icing: by innocence they hallow a cake, and make a new niche for the sacred  Umbrellas on a Beach, by Stephen Horton, O.S.B. (England) contemporary Umbrellas on a Beach Glissade of tide sliding in and in, eyes ride and ride horizon’s line, sibilance of wave, brine on the breeze, two umbrellas: a wild peace. Johanna Caton, O.S.B. Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun of Minster Abbey in Kent, England. Born in Virginia, she lived in the United States until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England. She writes poems as a means of understanding the presence of the Sacred in her life. She is a regular contributor to the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website; her poems have also been published in The Christian Century, The Amethyst Review and in other publications, both online and print. Stephen Horton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine monk of Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire, England. He runs a gallery at Prinknash Abbey in which his artwork is on display and for sale. His works range from oil portraits on canvas to watercolors of architectural antiquities. More of his work can be seen at this link: https://www.prinknashabbey.org/st-albert-of-jerusalem  Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, by Johannes Vermeer (Netherlands) c. 1670 Time in Those Houses who knows what importance / She attaches to the hours? Medbh McGuckian, “The Flitting”. The Flower Master. Oxford UP 1982 I It’s not the people or their looks, or their clothing. I am not an anthropologist of necklaces, Of silver jugs pouring milk. It’s mastery, for sure, but of something else. The windows, for example, and the quiet, background: Nuances of anthracite, dove or smoky grey. Around the furniture – yes – there’s light, obviously. He had theories for his out-of-focus maps, The studded chairs, but the Indian casket is shut. Jewels inside? Lapis lazuli maybe? His signature blue ultramarine, or a pale one, or Faded golden coins of yellow ochre. Maybe, Faded letters, read and read again, with just a drop of white. II Wandering around for hours, when did you notice it? The silence of these houses. The women you meet, And they are almost always women, are in that silence, Of that silence. Nothing otherworldly, nothing Really important; normal, domestic stuff. Nothing with a male, capital letter: books, a red hat, Curtains, sewing, carpet. Playing the spinet. They know they are being looked at, but keep on living. The others in a story – visitors, errand boys, husbands, Lovers, even children – removed for once. One can’t always be acting; there must be some pauses. Hours come and go, filled, or not, with those same things, But rearranged: one reads the spouse is dead, or the child, or alive. III The objects look the same, and yes, the subjects are minimal; One may say those casual hours – but cared for – are a naïve party, Almost mute, instead of serious daylight, but do we “know What importance we attach to the hours?”, the inevitable, indispensable Pause from history, from the madness that assaults life in you, From this opera house, this theatre with its expensive props, A globe for a funeral with fourteen pallbearers. He painted the absence, the waiting, what was that The canal, the ink, the basso continuo emerged from, The grace of ordinariness one only remembers after. He painted the time balanced between eyebrows. That moment. And now, sit or stand up, do what you have to. People The stuff of history, keep looking on; but you have to live. Massimiliano Nastri Wholly Unnecessary Notes See Gregor JM Weber, Johannes Vermeer. Faith, Light and Reflection. Rijksmuseum 2023. In 1664 Willem Thins, Vermeer’s brother-in-law, was locked up in an institution after an argument with his mother, and for attacking his pregnant sister with a stick. JM Montias,Vermeer and his milieu. A Web of Social History. Princeton UP 1989, pp. 160-9. A document recently emerged records 14 pallbearers for Vermeer’s funeral procession. Massimiliano Nastri: "An ever-receding biography: I spent my childhood in a German-speaking village on the Italian Alps, something redolent of Heidi, the cartoon. Three PhDs: is it an achievement? I only have few and minor publications. I work as a teaching assistant at Queen’s University Belfast, where I am revising a book about the interwar collapse of Centre-right parties and the rise of fascism. I am unsure whether it is more ominous or irrelevant. I am also guilty of an unpublished political novel, and of writing a second, to be equally unpublished. Proud of having some work published on Ink Sweat and Tears, Honest Ulsterman and Cyphers. Fifty years old."  Hotel Eden, by Joseph Cornell (USA) 1945. © 2023 The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Junior Explorer The Age of Exploration began in the second term of the Eisenhower Administration when our dentist discovered Tahiti, the Millers went on safari, and I circled the globe spinning under my finger at the Warder Park Public Library. I studied the world as best I could in a middling midwestern town by curating a collection of objects lovely but odd: a stuffed parrot from a secondhand shop, sparkly stones from Saint Raphael’s lot, snowdomes and stamps from exotic spots, agates and cats eyes from a five and dime, acorns and buckeyes from Roosevelt Drive, cicada shells and butterfly wings and lots of other odd-lovely things. National Geographic soon sent me south to the hot zones (Sumatra, Sumba, Gabon) to survey states of indigenous undress and map the contours of the opposite sex. Like Cortez, I pillaged and stole, clipped gold doubloons from the Caribbean, Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, hammered gold from the Taj Mahal, hung all my loot on my bedroom wall. Oh, it was a large and wondrous room where I nested, dreamed and became the insufferable stuffed bird that I am. Daniel Coyle Daniel Coyle recently retired from a career as a harmless drudge in the information industry. He lives in Washington DC. His poems have appeared in the Wallace Stevens Journal, Arkansas Review, Fortnightly Review, Blue Unicorn.  Le Lilas, Temps Gris, by Claude Monet (France) 1872 After Monet’s Le Lilas, Temps Gris The weather had not improved. A gray scrim seemed to descend once they crossed the footbridge over the pond, turning to mist as they continued down the path towards the river, Oscar and Sophie chattering about wildflowers and birds, as if, Eva thought, the weather was glorious. Following behind, Eva only listened, playing a game with herself, slowing her steps, wondering how far ahead Oscar and Sophie might get before noticing she was not immediately behind. She half-wished (while admitting her own pettiness) that they would go far ahead, and she could bask—or perhaps more aptly--wallow—in self-satisfied triumph. The idea of it caused her mouth to twist unbecomingly. But there was no one to see. But Eva was not to claim that satisfaction, for only a few moments passed before Sophie turned back, beckoning, calling merrily, “Come along! Oscar says it will be dry beneath the trees.” The path narrowed as it wound beneath the canopy of lilacs. Oscar went first, the basket over one arm. With the other he held back branches, waiting, patient and deferential, until Sophie, then Eva, passed. Eva hugged the picnic blanket, sulking. When they reached the bower of lilacs where they usually sat, Oscar set down the basket and dusted his hands before appropriating the blanket. Rather officiously, Eva thought, as he busied himself arranging it on the grass just so, then making a show of helping Sophie lower herself to sitting. She preened and plucked at her dress, arranging the fabric into careful folds. White linen, Eva thought, on a day like this. It will be her own fault it the hem is spoiled with mud. Oscar unpacked the hamper, holding up each item for Sophie’s inspection while speaking in an affected voice, describing the simple picnic fare as something grand. Eva, still standing, waited petulantly to be noticed as her husband continued his performance, calling the flask of tea fine Champagne. The bread and butter, he proclaimed, were orange petit fours and cream, from Ladurée, on the Rue Royale. The jam, he said, was fine caviar from Russia. Sophie giggled, continuing to arrange her dress. Eva sat, without grace, placing herself as far from Oscar as she was able, without sitting in the dirt. She observed her husband through narrowed eyes. She thought, he’s making an utter fool of himself. Above their heads, the lilac blossoms bowed and swayed and lazy bees droned. Eva found the sweet fragrance cloyingly, and the buzz of the bees an irritation. She wished she had thought to bring a novel. Oscar poured tea, and when he turned to offer a cup to Eva. She thought, Ten years. For ten years, he has seen me drink tea. And he does not recall that I do not take milk. Sophie turned, touching her lace-gloved hand to Eva’s arm. “Don’t be cross, Sister dear,” she said, “The weather will pass.” Liza Nash Taylor Liza Nash Taylor is the author of two historical novels; ETIQUETTE FOR RUNAWAYS (2020) and IN ALL GOOD FAITH (2021), both from Blackstone Publishing. She was a 2018 Hawthornden International Fellow and received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts the same year. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine; Deep South, and others. A native Virginian, Liza lives in Keswick with her husband and dogs, in an old farmhouse which serves as a setting for her novels. Find out more at lizanashtaylor.com, Instagram, and Facebook. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
April 2026
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