In the Shadow of Mount Cook Sir Edmund Hillary’s Great-Granddaughter Succumbs to Fever On an evening before winter waves goodbye forever and deserts devour the last screaming of trees, a stray sunbeam sneaks through a tangle of pines, goofs the shatter-angle, wreaks prism from join and summons the blue ice angels to rise. The quiescent chorus sings a unison, a requiem, a whisper, almost, of tiny bells. Frozen wavelets break their own backs and the beach blanket of snow snuggles last fall’s mudded shoe tracks striving some lost summit, where the moon on the glacier howls a memory of wolves. Brent Terry Brent Terry is an award-winning writer and a runner who teaches at Eastern Connecticut State University. He is judging our Lucky 7 Marathon for the poetry entries. He won the Connecticut Poetry Prize and was nominated for the PEN Faulkner Award for fiction. He is the author of The Body Electric, Troubadour Logic, and 21st Century Autoimmune Blues, among others. He is an accomplished Spoken Word artist. He loves Dr. Pepper.
2 Comments
Verano, El Repunte after Pajaros, Cementerio de Graciela Iturbide We slept in fog. Our lives pressed between two panes. I’ve taken an ax to all that’s browned. Set the palm roof onto the pyre. The braid unbound. I pulled the pearl buttons from your shirts. Made eyes for cotton dolls. I hate the retelling of dreams. I carry out the last that will burn. Birds double as smoke, cloak us with ash. On the doorframe, a caterpillar shroud. I am no taller than these walls. All that is flammable at the forefront. How do you end if not an epiphany? Wings glance my skin. My hands empty of what I still want. Alexandra Lytton Regalado Alexandra Lytton Regalado’s second poetry collection, Relinquenda, is winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, forthcoming fall 2022.) She is the author of Matria, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Alexandra is a CantoMundo and Letras Latinas fellow, winner of the Coniston Prize, and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets, Narrative, Gulf Coast, and Creative Nonfiction among others. Her poetry has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2018, The Wandering Song, Misrepresented People, and others. Co-founder of Kalina publishing, Alexandra is author, editor, and/or translator of more than fifteen Central American-themed books. She is chief editor at lapiscuchamagazine.com (a literary magazine dedicated to the Salvadoran community) and she is assistant editor at SWWIM (Supporting Women Writers in Miami). Her ongoing photo-essay project about El Salvador, through_the_bulletproof_glass, is on Instagram. For more info: www.alexandralyttonregalado.com The Art of Tarot Ekphrastic Flash Fiction and Poetry Contest, with Riham Adly and Roula-Maria Dib9/3/2022 We are very pleased to announce our new ekphrastic contest, on the theme of Tarot art. And we are absolutely thrilled to have guest judges Riham Adly and Roula-Maria Dib on board! Riham, our flash fiction judge, reads, writes, and teaches from the framework of the unconscious and has a special interest in Tarot imagery. Roula-Maria, editor of Indelible Journal, is a renowned Jungian scholar and poet. Find out more about these writers, their work, and what they'll be looking for below.
The Tarot's evolution from parlour games to gambling houses to divination claims is as fascinating as the timeless and mysterious archetypal images on the cards. The Tarot is widely used today for cartomancy, but it started out as a popular game and took a mystical turn in the 18th century. A modern approach is to use the archetypal symbols that fascinated Carl Jung for therapeutic purposes, psychological reflection, and creative exercises. We can't wait to see what these images inspire you to write! ** The Art of Tarot Rules 1. $10 CAD (approx. $7 USD) entry fee gets you an ebook with 36 Tarot-themed images, and you can submit three flashes or poems. First place prize for poetry and for flash fiction land $100 CAD prize each. 2. You can enter as many times as you like, using The Art of Tarot purchase button below as many times as you wish. 3. Poetry and flash fiction, up to 750 words per piece. 4. Use one or more of the artworks in the booklet to inspire your stories and poetry. You can interpret the artwork and the theme in any way you are moved to. Read the judges' overviews in this post (below) to get a feel for what they're looking for. 5. Ten poems and ten flashes will be chosen by the editor of TER and by our guest judges to publish in The Ekphrastic Review. Three poems and three stories will be finalists. One poem and one flash will take first place and each win $100CAD. The judges will read submissions blind. 6. Include a 75 words or less bio. 7. Use TAROT in the subject line. 8. Deadline is November 23, 2022. 9. Winners will be announced in December. 10. Submission email: theekphrasticreview@gmail.com A Word From Our Guest Judges Sometimes, the only way for us to confront a truth is to summon that never-ending fast track we call life, viewing it in a whirr, before slowing down to examine its components under the microscope. Having discovered that Tarot cards are nothing but archetypical images representing one’s journey—or what mythologist Joseph Campbell describes as “the hero’s journey,” we can use these symbols to create stories that thrust us further into the essence of our characters' journey, their perspectives and core emotions. The journey could be something as subtle as small adjustments that characters realize they need to go through, or revelations that are deep and internal. I would love if you could explore the storylines and the archetypical images in those cards using details, colours, and associations to see into the depth of your own Self. From there, explore new themes in your own writing, perhaps revisiting recurring themes, and understanding where it’s all coming from, as you craft your flash fiction. Riham Adly It is a with great honour and pleasure that I partake in this exceptional event, The Art of Tarot, so carefully put together by the inspiring artist, poet, and writer, Lorette C. Luzajic. While I don’t understand much about the Tarot in terms of technique, what I know is that it is a powerful array of symbols and images that move our archetypal energies into action. And the difference between “knowing” and “understanding”, by the way, is also something Tarot cards teach us. They speak to us in the language of poetry, which we grasp without any conventional tools of rational comprehension. Because symbols point toward possible meanings, the images of the Tarot speak possibilities without fixed meanings, pointing to the non-rational aspects of who we are. Unlike literalism and just like poetry, the Tarot brings back this symbolic essence of connection to other forms of reality. These cards are their own unique “alphabet” sparking truths through negative capability and synchronicities—a fascinating “alphabet” that the psyche can only fathom archetypally. We would see that each card has its own character, flavour, or personality, which matches one of our many archetypal voices that were activated while looking at it. And it is with great excitement to read your poems inspired by such rich visual language, the language of symbols, open—as ever—to hosting the unconscious. The ekphrastic journeys of your poems are evidence of your transition from the “visual” to the “visionary,” where the different voices of the images come to you to be embodied in such beautiful verse! Roula-Maria Dib Riham Adly is an award-winning flash fiction writer from Giza, Egypt. In 2013 her story “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the MAKAN award. In 2022 she won second prize in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition. She is a Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is included in the Best Micro-fiction 2020 anthology. Her fiction has appeared in over 50 online journals such as Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, The Flash Flood, Bending Genres, The Citron Review, The Sunlight Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Menacing Hedge, Flash Frontier, Flash Back, Ellipsis Zine, Okay Donkey, and New Flash Fiction Review among others. Riham has worked as an assistant editor in 101 Words and as a first reader in Vestal Review. Riham is the founder of the “Let’s Write Short Stories” and “Let’s Write That Novel” in Egypt. She has taught creative writing all over Cairo for years with the goal of mentoring and empowering aspiring writers in her region. Riham’s flash fiction collection Love is Make-Believe was released and published in November 2021 by Clarendon House in the UK. She is the first African, Arab woman to have a flash fiction collection published in English. Riham shares her craft articles about writing flash fiction through her blog “Riham Writes” and reviews a new flash fiction collection every month on her FB group “Riham Reads Flash.” Roula-Maria Dib is an award-winning literary scholar, poet, and editor whose research interests include literature, modern poetry and poetics, creative writing, and Jungian psychology. She is endorsed by the British Academy and holds a UK Global Talent Visa. Roula is the winner of the British Council’s Alumni Awards 2021-2022 for the Culture and Creativity category in the UAE and had also won the American University in Dubai’s Provost’s Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement 2020; her book, Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature (Routledge, 2020) was shortlisted as a finalist for the international IAJS book awards, and some poems from her collection, Simply Being (Chiron Press, 2021) received Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the founding editor of literary and arts journal, Indelible, and creative producer of literary event series, Indelible Evenings, as well as Psychreative, a virtual salon for researchers, artists, and writers with a background in Jungian psychology. Her MOOC, “Why Online Creative Communities Matter” is featured on Academia.edu. Formerly (until June 2022), she was a professor of English at the American University in Dubai. Abra Was There He slept peacefully. As she looked down at him, Judith could still feel where his hands had touched her, could still feel the places where he entered her body with his, could still feel his slaps, could still feel his kisses, could still feel the cold anger that had coiled around her heart. * "Judith, hold still," said Abra as she pulled a brush through the younger woman's thick red hair. Judith laughed, "My hair is fine." She took the shawl Abra held out and threw it around her shoulders. "Let's go," Judith said to her maid as she slipped through the tent opening. They walked through the small settlement. "Good Shabbos," they heard from people preparing food over the communal fire lit the day before. Judith and Abra returned the greetings but never stopped as they walked onto a rutted dirt road. Walking up the slight incline, Abra fell behind. She felt the unyielding surface of the road in the ache beginning in her knee that would eventually reach her hip. Approaching the Assyrian camp, the road turned to mud from the hooves of animals that had churned it up with their urine and excrement. Two guards, smirking, stepped up to them. "We have no more need of Jewish whores." The two men laughed. Judith smiled, "I have information for General Holofernes." The guard who had remained silent whispered something into the other man's ear. Sticking two fingers in his mouth and blowing a harsh whistle, a boy of indeterminate age came running, stopping and lowering his head. "Take our guests to the General's tent." The boy glanced back at Judith and Abra and stepped into rows of tents with fires at set intervals on each side of the path to larger tents. The boy pointed to one. Judith opened the flap, forcing a smile on her face. Abra stood behind her, and the two women stepped in. The brightly lit tent contained several dozen people. A cluster of them sat on cushions around a low table piled high with food, servants of both sexes standing ready. Off into the corner, several men were murmuring. One settled his eyes on Judith immediately. Still watching her, he got up and approached her. "You are?" he asked. Judith smiled. "I am Judith; I have information." "I am Holofernes; I would hear what you say." He touched her arm and led her back to the corner of the tent. "Please sit," he said as he directed her to a low stool and took the one across from her. Abra remained standing at Judith's side. He held his cup out, and a servant came to fill it. "What information?" Judith leaned forward. "They have strayed. I want their loss to your army to make them pay for their disbelief." Holofernes finished his drink and held out his cup. As a servant was refilling it, he looked at Abra. She looked down at the rich carpet under her feet. Her knee hurt and she could feel the sharp pain in her hip. Drinking deeply, he looked over at Judith. "You are a woman of faith. Faith should come before all else. But surely your god could kill them if they defied or displeased him." Judith stood up. "Well then, it would seem you are not interested in what I could tell you." Holofernes stood up as well. "How many men are trained to use a short blade?" he said to her retreating figure. "All have the training, but there are only twenty of those weapons." Judith kept walking out of the tent, with Abra close behind. Two days later, the boy who had shown them Holofernes' tent found Abra as she was collecting firewood. Abra tried to talk to him, but either he did not understand her or was mute. The two of them brought the firewood over to the communal fires, and he followed Abra back to Judith's tent. Wordlessly, the two women followed the boy up the hill. He left them at the tent, and Judith and Abra stepped inside. Holofernes was alone with one servant. He got up from the floor cushion when he saw them, staggering somewhat. He approached, looking only at Judith. Holofernes came forward and touched her arm. He reeked of wine and something sour. "I have been told by Nebuchadnezzar that you will be of value; the information was unknown to his spies. But you and I also have other business." Judith and Abra exchanged glances. "Of course. May I have some wine?" Holofernes motioned with his hand, and the slave came forward with a cup for Judith. He drained it in one gulp and held out his cup for more. Before it could be refilled again, he grabbed Judith by the arm and threw her onto his bed. * The cold anger in her heart drew her to the cold steel of the short blade Abra had concealed in her skirts. Judith took it and sliced Holofernes' head from his body. His eyes opened in alarm, but no sound came from his mouth. Placing the head in a small sack that Abra had concealed as well, the two women walked out of the tent. * A young girl walks to the well on a sunny day gifted with capricious breezes. The bucket swings as she skips to a song only she can hear. He jumps up from behind low shrubs and grabs her, one rough and heavy hand over her mouth and the other pulling her slim body towards his. His breath reeks of wine and something sour as he laughs and throws her unto the earth, smashing and twisting her knee and bruising her hip. He kept his hand over her mouth as he used her roughly, over and over, until he fell asleep. With no more tears and unable to find words, the girl pushed him off. She stumbled and landed close to his rough campsite. Next to some cooking implements, she saw a knife gleaming in the sun. She touched it, wondering if the blade was sharp enough. Rina Palumbo Rina Palumbo (she/her) came to writing after a career in college teaching and has published work in Survivor Lit, Beach Reads, and local magazines and journals. She is currently working on a novel and has two other long-form works in progress while continuing to write short-form fiction, creative non-fiction, and prose poetry. Many thanks to each and every one of you who participated in the Lucky 7 Ekphrastic Marathon in July! The marathon was an idea we borrowed from Meg Pokrass, and it was an experiment, and an experience. What a wild and intense outpouring of creativity it was! The ebook anthology of selected and winning entries is available for free download below. Please, please, please share this on your social media and send a copy to everyone you know. Tell the world about this journal and about our amazing writers. It is now the moment of truth. Our judges, Meg Pokrass for flash fiction, and Brent Terry, for poetry, have chosen the winners. The judges read the submissions from documents with no names. Please join me in congratulating the winners! Flash Fiction A Life of Drowning (first place): Nan Wigington The Fist They Make: Karen Walker Underground: Bayveen O’Connell I enjoyed reading the entries after having experienced the creative benefits of writing marathons myself. The stories I read were energetic and original, and I found it hard to select only one winner, but ultimately, “A Life of Drowning” won me over with its magical qualities. The late Russell Edson stated that prose poetry can create “a beautiful new animal.” “A Life of Drowning,” taken from the painting The Fisherman’s Cottage, shows the reader three moments in which a woman’s fate hangs in the balance. There are three “drownings,” but I won’t ruin the story by saying too much… The result delights us with the wildness of life’s uncertainty. There is a familiar and uncomfortable feeling about this story that is much like life itself, filled with weird surprises. Tapping gently into the all-too- familiar spectrum of a woman’s roles as a mother, wife, and daughter, the story addresses the archetypal problem of being “assigned” roles in life that few of us are truly cut out for. The author refuses to provide answers because answers, like the weather itself, are simply not to be trusted. This is utterly fantastic, dreamy writing. The strange, fable-like experience builds to a sad and beautiful conclusion. Plunged into a fairytale universe, the lines between fantasy and reality disappear. Meg Pokrass Poetry My Other Hand is a Tuba (first place): D. Dina Friedman Ex-voto for Washerwomen: Laurel Benjamin The Nuns' Complaints: Laurel Benjamin What a delight it was to read (and re-read, aaaand re-read) these poems. And what a challenge to narrow them down to three finalists and eventually one winner. The poems showed quality throughout, a remarkable range of formal inventiveness, and a rich array of interpretations of just what ekphrasis means anyway. From spelunking the original artwork and reporting back about what lies beneath the surface, to using the original as a launching pad to explore new ideas or the writer's own psychic landscape, these poems stretched the limits of what ekphrastic poetry can mean and do, and they pointed toward new frontiers in the form. I am honoured and inspired to have experienced them. Brent Terry ** Additional congratulations to those whose work was selected for the ebook anthology. 7 Aphorisms, by Saad Ali The Passage, by Claire Bateman After the Lantern Parade, by Roy Beckemeyer Ex-voto for Washerwomen, by Laurel Benjamin The Nuns' Complaints, by Laurel Benjamin The Passage, by Betsy Holleman Burke Art Walk Haibun, by Caitlin M.S. Buxbaum The Lantern Parade, by Michael Caines Headlines, by Kate Copeland Ghosts of Sakura, by Karen FitzGerald My Other Hand is a Tuba, by D. Dina Friedman Magic or Prayer, by Kortney Garrison O, the Raised Hand, by Karen George A Prayer to Selene, by Gabby Gilliam Ready to Go, by Cathy Hollister Nun in an Egg, by Lynne Kemen Fjord Summer, by Norbert Kovacs Diamonds for Stars, by Jackie Langetieg Recounting Hands, by Amy Marques Mirror Lake, by Jena Martin How These Shades of Blue, by Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Shall We Dance, by Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Haiku, by Lisa Molina Beyond the Lantern Parade, by Kim Murdock The Fisherman’s Wife, by Bayveen O’Connell Underground, by Bayveen O’Connell Praise, by Amy Phimister The Art of War, by Aline Soules Selected for Elimination (X-ed out), by Renée Szostek Hands, by Alarie Tennille Family Legend, by Deborah Trowbridge Torso Fruit, by Fran Turner Wheel of the Future, by Lauren Voeltz The Fist They Make, by Karen Walker A Life of Drowning, by Nan Wigington Ghost Sequence, by Cullen Wisenhunt Effigy Hand by Hopewell Culture 100BC-400AD, by Catherine Young FREE ANTHOLOGY DOWNLOAD HERE
Unit #86, from the Clavilux Junior (First Home Clavilux Model) series, by Thomas Wilfred (United States) 1930 Unit #86 Kick off your shoes. Mix an old-fashioned, light on the ice. Burrow into the divan’s crushed velvet. Unwind from the workday. Play your box full of souls like an instrument of light, the colour of sunsets, of sea turning brackish, of watercolour droplets. Waltz away your assumptions of visible rays from the comfort of home. Press a button: Earth tones, pastels, technicolour. Close the cabinet doors. Exorcise the window back to its Art Deco container, lacquered wood and metal hinges, blocky pinnacles and symmetry cutting like obsidian. Fall asleep knowing the divine resides in the other room. Unit #50, Elliptical Prelude and Chalice, from the First Table Model Clavilux (Luminar) series, by Thomas Wilfred (United States) 1928 Unit #50, Elliptical Prelude and Chalice Look up! Any ceiling can blossom with sunflowers and irises. Pour the honey out, rebuild the beehive from its molten core. Penny floating high, penny drifting down. Melt floorward and sink shoulders into carpet. A stone coaster protects my gin and tonic protects my maple table projecting hallucinations. Let the lamp hum, let its motor breeze bangs from the brow. Do spectres dance like lumia, rearranging and twirling in the memory loop of the living? End thought. Grab another sip. Don’t deeply ponder. Simply look up and swim. Lumia Suite, Op. 158, by Thomas Wilfred (United States) 1963-1964 Lumia Suite, Op. 158 Glue my boots to the tile, peel my eyelids back, sustain me through carrier pigeons and raindrops. Tell the docents to tour around me, the security guards to wink as they pass. I won’t blink. I will count the jellyfish glowing up from base to apex. Number the periwinkle angel wings hugging the screen’s horizon. Inhale every shade of burnt orange, exhale every colour of lapis lazuli. When nine years, 127 days, and eighteen hours pass, I will greet the phoenix haint behind the screen with new cells, time replacing all things. Lauren Kardos Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. You can find her on Twitter @lkardos. Ten Years After Posing as Ophelia for Lizzie Siddal I fight the chilled air now as I fought the freeze then and willed the water warm. I shiver in the birth bed - Ophelia, I am you once again. There is no lush riverbank no pansies or roses in this birth bed where I lie in blood-soaked sheets. Only an umbilical cord that garlands my stillborn's neck - her tiny palms colder than yours, Ophelia. My red hair tangles with beads of opium’s sweat and grief. Polly Giantonio Polly Giantonio's poems and work have appeared in various journals, including an interview published in Poets & Writers. She has been a long-time student of Prem Rawat, Ambassador of Peace. Polly resides in rural Vermont, USA. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you. Join us on Facebook:
Tickled Pink Contest
May 2024
|