 Natural Arch at Capri, by William Stanley Haseltine (USA). 1871. Some Places So High
that ships in the sea are like tiny white water birds dwarfed by carven cliffs. I should have liked to bring you here to clamber up through brave patches of mossy grass creviced in red rock to watch our great shadows dancing together and to laugh at the ships dreaming of gold and spices. I could have talked to you about what seeing is like, from up here converting colours into hard gems of words for you, working carefully until all the bloom of this red and blue world burst in upon the graves behind your eyes – slate pink horizon dusted in distant shores and deepening in the shadowed turquoise of these our waters rust bright rocks stacked to rival Babel rising to mighty arches – I could have taught you the magic of the world through the kiss of sea breezes shivering so high above the surf through the feel of stone warmed in lingering sunlight through the sound of baby waves flirting with slippery crab-infested roots of the cliff and laughing, as all the world laughs, at the little white birds on the sea. Perhaps, if you had come to visit, if I had found a way to lead you to the edge and paint the shades of ocean in your brain – perhaps you would not have jumped. Shannon Lise Originally from Texas, Shannon Lise spent twelve years in the Middle East and currently lives in Québec. Her first poetry collection is underway and recent work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Sunlight Press, Ink in Thirds, Eunoia Review and Red Eft Review. She also writes epic fantasy realism (Keeper of Nimrah, 2014).
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 Family photo provided by the poet. Laura Ann and Her Papaw Brumleve Eat Bean Soup  Brian A. Salmons
Brian A. Salmons lives in Orlando, Florida. His work has appeared in Eyedrum Periodically, NonBinary Review, Poets Reading the News, Poetry WTF?! and PARKXVI, among others. He is the host of @BrianAndTheNight, a poetry podcast on Facebook.  Rainy Night at Etaples, by William Edouard Scott (USA). 1912. Ekphrastic Writing Challenge
Thank you to everyone who participated in our last writing challenge for Tolima-Region Gold Breastplate, Colombia, which ends today. Accepted responses for the Gold Breastplate challenge will be published on December 7, 2018. The prompt this time is Rainy Night at Etaples, by William Edouard Scott. Deadline is December 14, 2018. PLEASE NOTE: In order to better organize submissions, we have a new email for challenge submissions:ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com Everyone can participate! Try something new if you've never written from visual art before and discover why there are so many of us devotees. Ekphrastic writing helps artists and lovers of art to look more carefully, from different angles or mindsets, at visual art. And it helps writers discover new ways of approaching their work, their experiences, and writing itself. The rules are simple. 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 painting 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. 3. Have fun. 4. Send only your best results to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. 5. Include SCOTT WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line in all caps please. Please use this email only for challenge submissions. Continue to use the regular email for regular submissions and correspondence. 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. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your poem. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is December 14, 2018. 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. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! Please note, next year we are going to have some special guest editors judging some of the challenges! We're hoping this will inspire in unexpected ways, add new flavours and perspectives to the journal, and foster community. When a challenge has a guest editor, it will be announced in advance as well as in this space the day the prompt is posted. We're excited about this and about having a whole year of challenges, now that we've found an ekphrastic prompt system that is working out in terms of consistency and longevity. Many great poems will be written in the year ahead!  Untitled, by Zdzisław Beksiński (Poland). 1984. (copyrights inherited by Muzeum Historyczne w Sanoku) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] Untitled Love
The two of them died in the war, but their bodies remained, entwined in each other’s limbs causing them to become a statue of molten skin, pressed tightly together and clenching open palms to bare backs, locked in an embrace that can’t be unbound, one continuous creature unable to be ripped apart, each trying to shield the other from the doom lurking behind eyes closed tightly because what you can’t see can’t hurt you and life will be okay, but they perished with their naïve ideal of hugs curing any harm that comes their way, their arms scrambling to latch onto any part they could wrap themselves around, bones protruding from the translucent surface stretched loosely over every angle of the two headed being with its four legs crossed within itself, tightening the core of the beast, digging claws into the shoulders of its counterpart, toes thrust into the ground, their last effort at rooting themselves before the burst of light from the distance swept them away in its radiant gaze, and tears trekked down their faces, trusting the caress to withstand the tenacious winds lamenting towards them, this was their last exhale before they were damned to this ground. Faith M. Deruelle Faith M. Deruelle lives in Brooklyn with her one cat and one fish. She was born in Florida, and attended Florida State University where she obtained a Bachelor of Science in Creative Writing and Environmental Science. Faith is in a Master of Fine Arts program at The New School in New York.  With Hidden Noise, by Marcel Duchamp, (USA, b. France). 1916. With Hidden Noise
Two brass plates, engraved on the top and bottom with English and French words, and in between these, a small ball of twine that hides a noise inside of it when it is shaken. All of these joined by four screws. If you are inclined, supply your own noise because you can’t shake this ball of twine. The museum won’t allow it. So wear a grimace. Begin to scream. A scream will do it. Don’t save it for a private performance in the shower. Scream if you are inclined. Maybe you’ll cause a fine ruckus and a kind of wonder. The museum will never forgive you, but your audience might think you’re part of the display; an art object. You scream. It just won’t work. No matter how much you scream. You can’t shake them up. You shut up and attempt to stuff your scream into that small ball of twine, with a noise already hidden inside of it, which is sandwiched between two brass plates joined by four screws. You can’t get near it. It’s impossible. Is it true that a scream is still a scream even if you can’t hear it? Things get balled up. Things get hidden. Things forget to make a noise, or a noise is ignored. Supply your own noise, or keep it hidden. No one will listen. Jenene Ravesloot Jenene Ravesloot has written five books of poetry. She has published in After Hours Press, Sad Girl Review, DuPage Valley Review, the Caravel Literary Arts Journal, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Packingtown Review, The Miscreant, Exact Change Only, THIS Literary Magazine, and other online journals, print journals, chapbooks, and anthologies. Jenene is a member of The Poets’ Club of Chicago, the Illinois State Poetry Society, and Poets & Patrons. She has received two Pushcart Prize nominations in 2018.  The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, by Katshushika Hokusai (Japan). 1831-33. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa
I am the one in the lowest boat my head flung back my face the colour of rice the colour of the distant moon as the great wave too flings back crests up over curving curling caving in while I am only a white foam-speck my face a pale flint-fleck my blue fishing jacket a drop of indigo water at the foot of the glowering towering tide our painted prow rises skywards on the wave but we are overswept the mountain shakes even the very sea-bed quakes heaves up the tsunami soaring over me by beauty are we so engulfed in the unstoppable rising roaring wave all white-fingered more mountainous than Fuji that we are done for small consolation to be dying a beauteous death forever poised below the wave immortalized by Hokusai’s deep dangerous ink Lizzie Ballagher A published novelist between 1984 and 1996 in North America, the UK, Netherlands and Sweden (pen-name Elizabeth Gibson), Lizzie Ballagher now writes poetry rather than fiction. Her work was featured at the 2017 Houston, TX, Poetry Festival and also appears intermittently in South-East Walker Magazine and Poetry Space. Having spent all her life in editorial and teaching work, she is a long-time member of the UK Society of Authors. She lives in southern England, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. Her poetry has appeared in magazines in England, Ireland and the US. Two of her poems have recently been nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Mind/ful/l
of Miles What’s new? I too am kind of blue, ear buds soothing “So What,” Chambers and then Evans noodling Gil E.’s intro. Sooo what? Upright walks in the tune, conjures modal three-part sooo what’s. No mute for Miles, just cool, crystal- clearful riffing. Sooo what? Coltrane’s tenor takes me… Jimmy’s brushing behind. Sooo what? Cannon- ball’s break before more Bill, then back as one: Sooo what? B-dah b-dah- b-dah b-daaah: Sooo what? B-dah b-dah b-dah. b-dah bah: Sooo what? B-dah b-dah- b-dah b-daaah: Sooo what? B-dah bah-bah- baaah: Thaaa’s what. D.R. James This poem was first published in Ireland's Galway Review. D. R. James has taught college writing, literature, and peace-making for 34 years and lives in the woods outside Saugatuck, Michigan, with his wife, psychotherapist Suzy Doyle. His work appears in various magazines and anthologies, his latest of seven collections is If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press, 2017), his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz will appear soon from The Origami Poems Project, and his chapbook Surreal Expulsion will be released in the spring of 2019 by The Poetry Box. www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage  Photograpy by Mark Basarab (USA). Contemporary. From Unsplash. Click image for artist site. We are galactic trout
and swim where canyon walls give shape to the galaxy above-- a black oxbow river dotted with firefly prey. We are docile trout-- hungry, yet know the hunt is pointless. For when we arrive, the objects of our desires will be gone-- moving as far away as we move near. Jordan Trethewey Jordan Trethewey is a writer and editor living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. His work has been featured in many online and print publications, and has been translated in Vietnamese and Farsi. To see more of his work go to: https://jordantretheweywriter.wordpress.com  Improvisation 35, by Wassily Kandinsky (Russia). 1914 Lonely Bird All the colours of chaos and smudge smear The clear eyes of heaven and of earth So that nothing is clear any more And black and white is buried in the turmoil Smeared onto the canvas of life And man cannot recognize his mate… But in the turmoil, the caloposy* of modern art In the disharmony of colours arguing against blending… A loney bird sings. Its voice rises above the cacophonic pandemonium As the musical notes fall from their clefs And scream in their horror of loss and abandonment… Yet the loney bird sings, a lonely herald of hope In a vision of renewal and peace. Listen. Listen. Listen to the lonely bird sing. Her song is the song of hope. Her song is the prayer of the lost children, Of the lonely and the beaten, And a cry for the path less taken. Sing with the lonely bird Gird your lonely loin, Join with the colours of Hope, Slope not away from her song. For the fish in the seas lose their senses Of navigation and distance in the reverberations Of the swirling, howling colours and one landmark Butts into another and one fish can no longer Recognize another in its new and splodged colours In this crazy mixing bowl of splish splashing Hues and dyes, And one by one each fish, each one dies... And in the swirl and the scramble of chaos And rewritten history repeating itself The minds of mankind like The Scream are screaming Out like the lost souls being sucked into Dante’s Inferno, and the crazy painter Splashes more colours and more... And the butterflies, and the humming birds Are not painted in but are being painted right out… And the drum beat keeps skipping its beat And the music can find its rhythm no more And the orchestral members keep trying to Out-loud each other in great disharmony… And yet, the loney bird sings. Her song is the song of hope. Her song is the prayer of the lost children, Of the lonely and the beaten, And a cry for the path less taken. Sing with the lonely bird, Gird your lonely loin, Join with the colours of Hope, Slope not away from her song. H. W. Bryce *caloposy – a made up word to describe the chaos of colours (in modern art) H. W. Bryce, BA, Western University, lives in Metro Vancouver, Canada. Former journalist, editor, book editor, teacher, courier, and robbery and kidnap victim while travelling the Middle East and North Africa, he survived near-clinical depression by writing poetry. While learning the art of caregiving to his late wife on her long goodbye Alzheimer’s journey, both his writing and his life were transformed. His poetry appears in anthologies in Canada, the US, and India. He is published in the Neworld Review. Mr. Bryce was one of three judges for the 2017 Rabindranath Tagore Award International English Poetry Competition. He is the author of a family book Ann, A Tribute, and of Chasing a Butterfly: a journey in poems of love and loss to acceptance, the poems of Alzheimer’s and poems for everybody. Mr. Bryce’s blog appears on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/herb.w.bryce He has been a featured poet and frequent contributor to many venues, and has ‘appeared’ on radio as well. Mr. Bryce is a member of the Royal City Literary Society and the Holy Wow Poets Canada.  The Day Before Heaven and Hell, by Jean Vengua (USA). Contemporary. Click image for artist site. Blackbird
Sound was nonexistent. “Tree” or “hill” or “mountain” were ideas in God’s mind. The creative urge shaded with blues. “Flower” and “leaf” were light’s saplings, which upon command went wild, divine desire for company spindly as needles. Millennia later, man’s self-extensions grew black as greed. Let there be light was a thought that sounded good. Light neither from the sun nor the moon, but the ray of love from God’s heart. Light remained for three days. Then the tree, the hill and the mountain formed. Heaven still the background. Blue until today. The Earth’s bowel had to be carved and abyss was a thought. A hunch. Sufferings would be black as pines, pains red as shadows before dawn. Hell’s hole had to be dug, before the blackbird resisting God’s thirteen ways of looking created the first sounds with its song Jonel Abellanosa Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Rattle, Poetry Kanto, Anglican Theological Review, Mojave River Review and Star*Line. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Dwarf Stars award. His fourth chapbook, Songs from My Mind’s Tree, has been published in early 2018 by Clare Songbirds Publishing House (New York), which will also publish his full-length collection, Multiverse, in late 2018. His poetry collection, Sounds in Grasses Parting, is forthcoming from Moran Press. |
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