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The Ekphrastic Review rejoices at the absolute bounty that arose from so many imaginations during the Nine Lives Marathon in July, when we celebrated together nine years of this journal, writers, and art. Here is our selection of prose chosen from the entries, and the announcement of the winning story. (The selection of poetry entries will be posted separately.) Congratulations to everyone who participated in the marathon, whether or not you entered your works or felt happy with what you made. For this particular creative event, the goal is to complete the marathon and to "see what happens." We are inviting the muse in an intense but fun way, shaking things up, trying something different, and indulging ourselves in a day of pure exploration and play, rather than doing any work that is administrative, editing, revising, or grammar. Kudos for being there! This year we decided to do something different with the marathon entries, and chose a work from every submitting participant. The result for readers is a wonderful array of ingenuity and insight. Bravo! A massive thank-you to editors Kate Copeland and Sandi Stromberg for their presence, brilliance, and hard work. The prize winning entry in both poetry and flash categories will be announced within a few weeks. See you at the marathon next year! Plan on joining us if you haven't joined yet. It's amazing. love, Lorette with Kate Copeland and Sandi Stromberg ** Announcement of Winning Story Nine Lives was my first marathon as an editor at The Ekphrastic Review. What a joy it was to watch the stories emerge online as the eight hours ticked along. Then, I had the opportunity to read many of them as entries in finished form. After that came the challenge of selecting the prose winner. I enjoyed all the pieces submitted, and when I say challenge, I mean challenge. I was impressed time and again by the stories. Especially fun were the variety of tales told in response to the same artwork. In the end, the piece that most captured my imagination is Norbert Kovacs’s “Private Island." Written in a woman’s meandering voice, it perfectly captures Paraskevi Fasiola’s almost labyrinthine if only I hadn’t wished for what I thought was missing. Congratulations to all of you for taking part in this year's marathon! Your tenacity and creativity are truly astounding. Happy writing! Sandi Stromberg Editor, The Ekphrastic Review ** Norbert's winning story runs first, and then the other selections follow in alphabetical order of the author.  If only i hadn’t wished for what I thought i was missing, by Paraskevi Frasiola (Greece) 2022 Private Island She would live on a private island if she could. It would be in the tropics. She'd have a coconut tree on a hill there; it would supply her plenty of coconuts. Of course, one island with a coconut tree might not be enough if she proved very hungry or thirsty. So she'd have another island close by, a short swim away. She could go get coconuts there if she ran out on the first island. Or if there was a hurricane and the tree on the first island blew down. Then she would need the second island entirely to provide for her. If it became the only island for her, though, she would need another island with a coconut tree to be the alternate one. She wouldn't go and live again stuck on just a solitary isle. So she'd have three islands but use only two. By this point, though, she hoped to better secure the arrangement against another hurricane. She would have a fourth island, a short swim away. A fifth for contingency. She ought not to short change herself, she felt. She thought then it might get monotonous to have all those tropical islands, each just a hill crowned by a coconut tree. To avoid feeling bored with them, she thought to have a different kind of place nearby to go on occasion. She liked those landscapes from the American west, so thought she would have a tall butte on an island to itself. She'd put it right by her tropical islands. But a butte in mid-ocean might look odd, and she wanted to minimize any such feeling about the scene. So, she'd have a few buttes there, each on its own island; she considered she could look then from one to the next as you do in a fine desert landscape of the American west. The buttes might form a sort of line across the ocean, but not perfectly, which wouldn't seem natural. She considered each butte ought to have the sun cresting its top for the visual effect of bright light against the brownish red stone. Somehow then, she must arrange to have the sun cresting each butte at any time. The solution she realized was for each butte to have its own private sun. The suns would form their own line in the sky like the buttes on the water. To keep things consistent, the tropical islands would have a sun shining somewhere else. Of course, having five, six, or more suns beaming down at the same time might make it hotter than she could take. Actually, it would make climate change look like a joke. How very quickly paradise can turn into hell, she thought. Norbert Kovacs Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He has published art-inspired short stories in Timada's Diary, MacQueen's Quinterly, and The Ekphrastic Review. His website: www.norbertkovacs.net.  Mount Pleasant Rd., by John Montgomery (United Kingdom) 2024
 Hylas and the Numphs, by John William Waterhouse (England) 1896 You, in a Crowd Please understand. I love your limpid ways, the way water slips off your shoulders as softly as a silk robe might slide down a maiden’s arm. But I cannot discern which of you is you. Who could have imagined nymphs as clones? Each intonation, each glimmer of eyeshine the same, as if you were on display in a hall of mirrors. I embrace you and hear a chorus of sighs, whisper endearments in your ear and see choreographed smiles, matching nods in perfect synchronization. Which of you truly loves me? Which of you do I truly love? Only you can satisfy my thirst, and I languish here, throat dry, parched, need unquenched, a pauper awash in an abundance of plenitude. Roy J. Beckemeyer The most recent of Roy Beckemeyer's five volumes of poetry is The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023), a poetry finalist for the 2024 High Plains Book Awards. His poetry has been anthologized widely, including in The Best Small Fictions 2019. Links to selected works may be found on his author’s page: royjbeckemeyer.com. Beckemeyer is a retired engineering executive and scientific journal editor from Wichita, Kansas.  Court Ladies Adorning Their Hair with Flowers (detail), by Zhou Fang (China) 8th century Liberation With each yapping and growling of the Pekingese dog, Lady Zhou’s headache pounded harder on her temples. The dog was Bo-Bo, newly gifted to Lady Fang, the second wife of her husband and nephew of the emperor, Master Zhu. A cup of fragrant jasmine tea brought temporary relief until the dog let out another streak of shrieks that reverberated through the hallway. That was it! Lady Zhou sat up from her bed and strode to Lady Fang’s chamber. She kicked the double doors open to find Lady Fang teasing the dog with a fúchén, swinging the tip of horsehair in front of his muzzle, and lifting it up out of his reach when he jumped. She laughed as loud as the dog’s barks. That girl wasn’t even pretty: round eyes like fisheyes, bushy eyebrows, lips bulging out like a carp out of water, her laughter sounded like hyenas cackling at night. She never even covered her mouth when talking. Bo-Bo yelped at Lady Zhou, sank his teeth on the fabric of her Da Xiu Shan. Lady Fang turned around, and she quickly put her hands together, and bowed deeply. “Get that dog away from me!” Lady Zhou shouted. Maids appeared and took Bo-Bo away. “This is unacceptable,” she seethed, “you’d better keep this dog quiet, or I’ll send it to the kitchen for roast dog meat.” Lady Fang prostrated on the floor. “Please forgive me, Dai Tai-Tai! My life is worthless, I’m just a simple girl.” Lady Zhou was surprised by Lady Fang’s humble demeanor. Could she have misjudged her? She remembered her first days as a newlywed after her parents arranged her marriage a decade ago. How scared and lost she felt. Only after she’d produced a son and held the power of mother of the heir did Master Zhu stop pinching and slapping her. Her bruises healed. On the other hand, after a year and with no child, Lady Fang had nothing to claim but a yapping dog! She was barely sixteen, at the mercy of the slightest displeasure of Master Zhu. “I didn’t want a dog,” Lady Fang explained, teary eyes cast downward. “Master Zhu said that since I couldn’t bear him any child, I should live the life of a dog. I play with Bo-Bo, wishing he were a son of mine, but all he does is bite and tear bedsheets!” Guilt and shame tugged at Lady Zhou’s heart. She’d been secretly relieved at Master Zhu’s taking up another wife. Another woman for him to torment. She had to stop him. At Master Zhu’s birthday banquet, she snuck in Bo-Bo. In front of 100 guests, Bo-Bo bit and chewed on Master Zhu’s hem that had been rubbed in meat sauce. He kicked Bo-Bo away but caught his foot on the kang zhuo table instead, sending cups and chopsticks in the air. Servants tried to pull Bo-Bo away. He held good until the fabric tore. Master Zhu fell from the platform and broke his neck. Christine H. Chen Christine H. Chen was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Madagascar before settling in Boston where she worked as a research chemist. Her fiction has appeared or forthcoming in Fractured Lit, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Atticus Review, Time & Space Magazine, and elsewhere. Her work was selected for inclusion in Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2023, Best Microfiction 2024, and Best Small Fictions 2024. Her publications can be found at www.christinehchen.com  Ex-voto Painting, from Liguria (Italy) 1879 Mother and Mary What would it feel like, to watch your son die? Dressed in blue, standing in a crowd as they jeer at a man dying on a cross. What would it feel like, to watch your son crucified for the crowd and be incapable of intervening? At that moment, Mary felt helpless. Another head in the crowd, her gray and brown hair hidden by her blue robes. Sadness in her breast as she stared up at his beloved face, more familiar than her own. Her son on the cross, her son dying with nails in his palms. She had held those very hands in her own. She had kissed them, she had cleaned them, and now there was blood weeping from them. There was nothing she could do to alleviate his suffering. She could not hide him from the glare of the sun or the anger of the crowd. She could not ward off the crows that emerged to pick at his still-living flesh. She will outlive her son. Days later, Mary heard that he had risen from the dead. She had wept beside his bloodied corpse, washing his dead body with her brown hands. She had sealed his tomb to prevent people from stealing in to see him, to jeer at him even in death. And now she would not even see him in death. There was nothing left of his body in the tomb. What could it feel like, to watch your child fall and be unable to catch her? A woman dressed in simple clothes, busy with her laundry. What would it feel like, to see your daughter's head split open in the house where she was born? She had told her too many times that she was too little to lean over the railing. That she shouldn’t lean so far. One minute when she wasn’t watching her, eyes stuck to her hands. Focused on the laundry that she had to scrub. The girl slipped. She screamed and her mother looked up, fear sharp as nails plunged into her flesh. She ran towards her, arms outstretched, to prevent the inevitable. She isn’t fast enough. She isn’t strong enough. She cannot prevent her daughter from hitting the tile, her head cracking open with a sickening thud. Her red blood is like the water her mother uses to wash the floor, her life's blood staining into her home. Mary is no longer alive. At this moment, she has the power to intervene. This is not her child. This is not her daughter, but she can step forward to prevent another woman's anguish. This is a child who does not need to die, a moment that can be changed, that Mary can save. She lifts her hand. In her mind, Jesus is a child again, lying close to her breast. Her babe that she can swaddle and look after. No one will ever do him any harm, and neither of them must face death. This daughter does not die today. Her mother has the strength and the time to catch her. She reached her daughter, standing in the spot where she would have died. She caught her without stumbling, holding her close as if she had been born again. Her child is crying, but the mother no longer feels afraid. She caressed her brown hair and kissed her brow, looking up to the heavens that her daughter fell from. What would it feel like, if she glimpsed a young face free of worry? A woman her age, smiling down while holding her own child. What would it feel like, if the child buries the mother, instead of the other way around? Anna Clark Anna Clark is a writer from Takoma Park, Maryland. She studied Creative Writing and Spanish at Oberlin College. She is currently working on writing a novel. In her free time, she enjoys reading, swimming, and yoga. This is her first year participating in The Ekphrastic Review's marathon.  Sky Above Clouds lV, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA) 1965 Eating Up the Sky It looks so calm, a pale blueberry smoothie spilled along the horizon, topping the last strip of pureed peach light, tiny marshmallow clouds floating in nice even innocent rows. But keep your eyes open, things are not as they seem. Those clouds aren’t really marshmallows, they’re milky baby-teeth. It may be too late once they start to feast and their colours start to change. Gobbling until they look like fat grapes. Gorging until they resemble bloated aubergines. Soon they will have consumed everything around them, but it won’t be enough. Appetites will only be whet, not sated. Saliva will drip and they’ll start to spin. Searching. Searching. Chomping up house shingles, they can never get enough of those. More. More. Uprooting trees. Flipping trucks. Really showing off until they, only they, decide it’s time to leave. Louella Lester Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of Glass Bricks (At Bay Press), a contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and has a story included in Best Microfiction 2024. Her writing appears in a variety of journals, including: Odd Magazine, Your Impossible Voice, Five Minutes, Yellow Mama, Roi Faineant, 50-Word Story, Dribble Drabble Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gooseberry Pie, Paragraph Planet, Hooghly Review, Bright Flash, Cult. Magazine, and SoFloPoJo.  Sleepwalking, photography by Alex Bramford (UK) 2023 Why Don't People Just Leave Me Alone? People ask me whether I know I’m sleepwalking. What a stupid question. The clue’s in the name, as my Darryl says to me. Of course I bloody don’t know! Do they think I’d go out in my pyjamas barefoot and walk up the rough gravel path behind my house at half four in the morning if I knew what I was doing? I know afterwards alright when I wake up back in bed with sore feet and grit between my toes. Some nights I wake up thinking I’ve pissed myself. Then I realise the wet patch on the sheets is related to the rain lashing down the window pane and my squelchy slippers ditto. Somnambulance it’s called. I’m ambulant when in a state of somnia. Somnia - sleep - opposite of in-somnia, something I’ve never been troubled with. Except when Darryl was a baby and he scriked all night. It was useful to be out walking in those days. Didn’t please the wife though. I’ve been at it all my life. Well, since I could ambulate. Just up and down the stairs in those days. My old man used to cuff me and pack me back to bed. When I was tall enough to open the back door it got more dangerous, especially near the cliffs. Ma used to push a dresser over every night to block my exit. Dad didn’t like that. Had to come back early from the pub if he didn’t want to sleep in the outside privy. He thought I was defective. I joined the Navy when I was fifteen. Only they sent me home after the medical. Can’t have sleepwalkers on a ship. I didn’t go home. Tried my hand in London. Met the wife there. Should have married her cousin. Bigger tits. She buggered off to Guildford late sixties and left me with Darryl. Came back a few years later and we gave it a go but we weren’t right for each other. I missed Darryl when she left the second time but he used to come down regular to stay with me. We fished and watched the footie on a Saturday. Darryl’s used to me toddling off at night but his missus thinks I should be in a home or something. Keeps carting me off to Casualty and telling them I’m a danger to myself. I’ll be a danger to her if she doesn’t watch it. So here I am now answering bloody stupid questions again trying to prove I’m not off me rocker. What year is it? Who’s the prime minister? I ask you. There’s nothing wrong with me a spot of breakfast won’t sort out but fat chance of getting that here. Last time I waited thirteen hours to see anyone and only got three stitches and one cold cup of tea - in a beaker! A beaker! She’s got my house keys this time though. I’m worried now I might not see my little house again for a very long time. I’m scared. 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.  If only i hadn’t wished for what I thought i was missing, by Paraskevi Frasiola (Greece) 2022 Wherever You Go, There You Are my brother said when I told him I was moving across the country. He only said it because he’s older, because he wants to sound wise, because he thinks I should listen to him. But as our family deteriorated, the idea of finding myself didn’t sound quite so bad. My mother wanted me to be a quiet boy who washed the dishes after dinner so she could go out back and sneak a cigarette, so I was. My father wanted me to be a good boy who told him how much Mom drank as she cooked, then kept his mouth closed no matter what he heard coming from the patio, so I was. My brother wanted me to be a wimp grateful for his interference, hiding in the closet until he told me the coast was clear, even though I could tell by the silence that lingered after my father slammed the front door behind him, so I was. But with that past crumbling and falling away, I found myself on unsteady ground. So I left, driving alone as if that would force me to realize who I was meant to be. I stopped for gas and bought a drink for every cup holder, just because I could. I slept in the reclined passenger seat because I didn’t need to make room for anyone else. With each mile I drove, I realized I didn’t need to move across the country to find myself. As my brother said, there I was. So I drove and drove and drove until I became the car and the car became me, and then we thought, wouldn’t it be nice to be the highway, so I was. Allison Renner Allison Renner’s fiction has appeared in Ellipsis Zine, SoFloPoJo, Six Sentences, Rejection Letters, Atlas and Alice, and Misery Tourism. Her chapbook Won’t Be By Your Side is out from Alien Buddha Press. She can be found online at allisonrennerwrites.com and on Twitter @AllisonRWrites  Port, by Toyen (Czechia) 1925 Los Angeles Harbor Main Channel, San Pedro, California Ships are anchored nearby in the harbour, waiting to be unloaded and lifted by forklift onto trains headed for faraway places—Omaha, Winona, Bloomington. The onshore wind blows hard and cold across the Pacific Ocean. When I get out of the car, I think of wearing my sweater but don’t because feeling cold with my hair whipping around and being alone in that feeling is exhilarating. In the parking lot of Warehouse Number 1, people arrive and sit on a loading dock, admiring each other’s classic cars. After a few minutes, they drag race on Harbor Boulevard like a scene from a classic Hollywood movie and are gone. Sooner or later, the water’s coming to get you, my father used to say. By now I understand he repeated those words to me as a child to make me strong and not give up on love, as he certainly had. I have no snapshot memories like his of working on the docks with friends when he was young and strong and could climb the geometric shapes of a port like Atlas. Instead, I lean over the dockside and wonder what lies beneath the ships anchored in the harbour and far beneath the water—sunken, metal vessels, brightly coloured fish with misshapen mouths, and green bottle glass once containing sweet soda pop. A vast ocean of bright, drowned things. Marjorie Robertson Marjorie Robertson is a storyteller and multilinguist. Her novel, Bitters in the Honey, was a semifinalist in the 2014 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Grain Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and The Santa Fe Writers Project, among others. Although she has enjoyed working as a bookseller, a teacher, and a French interpreter, her first love is foreign language. Her other interests include listening to music and exploring state parks. For more, see marjorierobertson.com.  Medieval Wolves, by Emma Carlow (United Kingdom) 2023 Medieval Wolves We used to be real wolves, alive back so many years ago, it’s hard to remember how many. We were a family of twelve blue wolves back then, we do not know what happened to our missing relations, we are only three now, our mother, one sister and one brother, me. Now we are small and stiff and cold, we cannot move, we frighten no one, we hunger always but can neither hunt nor feed nor quench our thirst. It is maddening, but we are wolves and we persist. At least we still are within sight of each other and are able to commune between ourselves, somewhat, with difficulty. As best we can piece things together, we ran afoul of a bad human, one who had availed himself of knowledge both deadly and cruel. While he himself had no fight with our family, he came to the attention of another, a wealthy and powerful human who did indeed have a rather monumental bone to pick with us. Apparently during an earlier and particularly storm-driven winter, near insane with hunger, we hunted and killed this man’s only son as he returned to the castle after finishing his studies at university. Please believe us that in the interests of our own safety, we as a matter of principle had never hunted humans because of the danger of engaging with human-packs. But the scant feeding provided by this one youth helped our pack to make it through a particularly dismal winter. Under circumstances like these do we not have the right to eat to stay alive? In the spring, while still searching for any sign of his son, this man discovered the last bony remains which clearly identified him as wolf-kill. Thus started a long and cruel vendetta against any and all wolves for a hundred miles around. Our own larger pack at that time numbered many, with several satellite packs of varying degrees of relation to us. When there were but the twelve of us left, the avenger paused briefly to bring our nemesis to the cave where he had cornered us. This other man was a fool, but possessed of a piece of ancient magic that was our downfall. He mumbled and gestured and called upon this necromancer and that demon, with the result that my mother, sisters and brothers and I began to shrink and solidify as we wept and spoke our love and farewells to each other. I called this evil practitioner a fool, and here is why… after he had shrunk each of us down to the size of a human hand he decided to toy with us before the magic was completed. As he dandled and juggled with us suffering and terrified beings, the last of our line of blue wolves, we fought and scratched and bit him repeatedly. Trifling though the tiny wounds were, our claws and teeth were as noxious and unclean as any full-sized meat-eating predator’s could be, and infection festered quickly and caused him a lingering, miserable, and well deserved death. The end of my tale is both short and long. In short order we were reduced to twelve carved and glazed toy wolf figurines. After many long years of being displayed as the evil man-killers that took the rich man’s son from him, we eventually were passed along to various other people; some were sold into we know not what. Tragically we even saw some of our brethren smashed before our eyes and thrown away. You see before you the last three that I know of: my blessed mother, my one remaining lovely sister and myself. We are toys for children, forgotten ornaments, someone’s unwanted junk. However, we are still wolves and we persist. Susan St Maurice Susan St Maurice spent many years as a technical writer, only to morph late into a fiber artist, maker of artist books, and printmaker. She's interested in using ekphrastic writing to develop original content for her artist books. She spends a lot of time in the New England woods with her two smallish dogs, both rescues from Puerto Rico.  The Healer by Rene Magritte (Belgium) 1939 The Healer after “The rain has stopped” by Eve Joseph from Quarrels (Anvil Press, 2018). The apple trunk has split and its limbs welcome lichen. My daughter is in the basement darkroom talking to Lazarus, who is folding my towels. She tells him things she cannot tell me, things about fruit bats and mica. Lazarus is old now, old as a swinging gate and wind-worn to a shine, but he holds my linens to his nose and breathes in the zest of June. From outside, I hear him tell her with a laugh lumpy as a pitcher of doves: this is how we unwind the light. Angeline Schellenberg Angeline Schellenberg is a treasure-hunter: thrifting, mudlarking, birding, and, as a contemplative spiritual director, listening in people’s everyday for the Divine. She has written Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016) about raising autistic children and Fields of Light and Stone (University of Alberta Press, 2020) for her Mennonite grandparents. She’s the second shooter at Anthony Mark Photography and the punny host of Speaking Crow—Winnipeg’s longest-running poetry open-mic. Angeline enjoys watching Korean dramas, talking to dogs, and eating other people’s baking. She is launching Mondegreen Riffs (At Bay Press, 2024), an askew review of hue, tune, and Yahoo.  The Ghost Story, by Walter McEwen (USA) 1923 Ghost Stories They were storytellers, these ghosts. Sometimes I saw them in their seventeenth-century woolen garb of red or green with modest lace collars and white aprons; their hair was always tucked neatly under lace caps. Most often, they gathered in my grandmother’s parlour, hands on spindles or needles, never idle, seldom pausing. Only Mrs. Winters lifted her hands as she raised or lowered her voice. Mrs. Winters was not the oldest of them, but she was the leader and the best storyteller. Her favourite story was the Woman in White who drifted through the house in her long white gown. Even when I couldn’t see them, I heard them whispering. When not listening to stories, they gossiped— “she went to the witch for a love charm. No good comes of that.” Then there were “tsk tsks” and nervous giggles from the younger ones. I was a child, but I knew not to tell anyone about the women and their stories. Still, I was an observer only—until the day I wasn’t. “Don’t stand there gawping, Child,” Mrs. Winters said, looking straight at me, “go fetch your embroidery.” I left the room and woke in my own bed. After that day, I went back and forth a few times, understanding somehow that time was fluid, a wave that ebbed and flowed, carrying me from and to my own shore. But I never knew when I would become unmoored. I only saw them at my grandmother’s house, and as I got older between school and then work, I couldn’t visit often, and I seldom heard the women. I almost forgot about them, but never the house. I loved my grandmother, and I loved her house with its gleaming polished wood, sunlit windows with wavy glass, and stern ancestors glaring at me from oil portraits in the gallery. We both wanted me to be married there. I would walk down the oak stairway and take the arm of my Robert at the base of the stairs. In my bedroom, on my wedding eve, I tried on my wedding gown. As I looked at myself in the mirror dressed in ivory satin and tulle, I saw Mrs. Winters behind me. Our eyes met—and I realized then that I was the Woman in White. Merril D. Smith Merril D. Smith is a Pushcart-nominated poet who lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her work has been published in poetry journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Acropolis, Sidhe Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Storms, Fevers of the Mind, Gleam, Humana Obscura, and Nightingale and Sparrow. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month.  Moonlight, by Josefina Holmlund (Sweden) 1895 Moonlight While the full moon’s shimmering light dissolves into the cove’s water, like milk in tea, no one notices the moment when the children leave their beds. Nor does anyone notice when their small footprints disappear in the sand with the tide. Come morning, all the villagers know is that the children have vanished. As if the moon engulfed them like a hungry wolf, and they now float in her full belly, aloft in another night sky, drifting. Mothers and fathers cry and raise their hands to their god in the sky, praying why, how, and please save them, bring them back, help us find our children. And no one answers. And no one thinks to ask the moon what happened. Except the blind, deaf, old witch who lives out in a sea cave, who saw and heard nothing that night, but felt the tide pull in her bones, the water rise in her belly, and an ancient mystery swell in her heart. The next night as the moon starts to wane, Witch asks, “Moon, what did you see with your white beams of light last night when the children vanished?” to which the moon says nothing, for she is slowly slipping into darkness, night by night and cannot hear or speak during her painful time of waning. Still, Witch asks every night, even as she feels the moon lose her strength, then go completely dark, herself disappeared. Faithfully, Witch persists, asking every night as she feels the moon begin to reappear, sliver by sliver, thickening night by night. “Moon, guardian of the night sky, great grandmother of the heavens, what did you see the night the children vanished?” And still the moon says nothing. Until finally, on the night of the next full moon, Witch asks her question, and the moon responds. “I did not see anything because the children are not missing. They have simply been sleeping in the mountains. If you could see, you would see them tumbling down, rubbing their eyes, ready for tea, biscuits, and bed.” And Witch saw all this in her mind and knew the villagers would be preparing the fire, the stake, her death, for surely she was to blame for casting this spell on their children. “Oh, Moon,” cries Witch. “I am old and blind and deaf and of little use for harm or good. But if you are willing I would tend your darkness, cradle it in my bony arms, sing sweet songs of love, and care for your body when it disappears in the sky. Would you take me, please?” Touched by the old witch’s steadfast questions and faith, the full moon says yes. And, while the full moon will always be filled with magic and mystery—which is another story for another day—this is why the dark new moon is always filled with tenderness and new beginnings. Ginny Taylor Ginny Taylor is a writer and artist living in Cincinnati. She is devoted to daily creative practices that include meditation, writing, visual sketchbooking, and hiking. She is even more devoted to her children and grandchildren. Her speculative memoir, The Castrato in Me, is her current work-in-progress.  Beach Scene 23, by Fergus Hare (UK) contemporary Beachscene When I was sixteen, we moved to a small town on the coast. My parents said it would be good for us, but I knew they were referring to me. They bought canoes, spoke about surfing lessons. On any windless evening in the week, they’d ask Who wants to go for a walk? and it didn’t matter what we’d answer—they’d traipse me and my sister with them to the beach. As the months passed, they ran into more people they knew—parents from my sister’s Girl Scout troop, the organist from church—and they’d waltz into a five-minute chat, my dad’s hands resting in his pockets, my mom leaning forward in a warm farewell before they loped away. In every interaction, I felt a hidden pressure, the flit of concerned eyes. My sister would chatter or dance through the water, but I was stuck, the backwash sinking my feet, the stress cementing my teeth. I couldn’t speak to adults, or anyone, really. With some practice, I found a way to be alone. I dawdled back, walked in slow zigzags through the surf, until my parents got distracted or tired of waiting. If my sister stayed with me, I was cold and offish until she got mad and ran ahead. Then I was left to my beach scene. While I walked, I’d raise my hand so that it hid my family. I imagined I was grown up, had driven to the beach on my own. I’d raise the other to cover the wind turbine—I had enough money to live near a beach that was nicer than this. When my arms got sore and drifted down, I was back with the sadness I couldn’t lift. Megan Tennant Megan Tennant is a writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. Her poetry has appeared in South African literary journals New Contrast, Prufrock, New Coin and others, and a work of short fiction is forthcoming in The Common.  High Noon, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1949 No Shade High Noon, by Edward Hopper reminds me of the house in Pasadena, Texas that we moved into in 1955 when I was seven years old. It was a new house in a new neighbourhood. The walls were wonky. They looked like those weird parallelograms we studied in geometry. Visitors would enter the house, scan the living room and muse, “Your walls are crooked.” My parents would laugh and shrug off the criticism masquerading as a benign observation. I hated summers at the new house. Mother would send us outside until she decided we needed a nap. The paucity of vegetation in this neighbourhood made us feel like we were in an urban desert. There were no trees to climb or sit under, or new friends for sharing adventures in the neighbourhood. Our days were filled with sizzling in the sun, sweating, and waiting for the call to come inside and cool off. At high noon, there was no shade for relief. A few years, later, summer meant sitting in lawn chairs in the front yard after dinner and visiting with the neighbors. My father would buy ice cream for the neighbourhood children. We ran from house to house, playing and letting the ice cream drip down our chins and stick to our clothes. I don’t know why the adults stopped the nightly pop-up parties in the summer. Once the children were teens and too old to play outside, these nightly fellowship meetings of the parents morphed into afternoon coffee for the women, and evening meetings for the men who wanted to become Freemasons. * * * Some of my family still lives in that house, now considered an old house in an old neighborhood. The neighbours mainly live indoors or in the backyard when the weather is nice. Folks who barbeque in the front yard are considered too “out there” and unable to “read the room” even though it is outdoors. There are plenty of trees to sit under if one were able to stand up, afterwards. And ample shade for relief and shadows for hiding. Margo Stutts Toombs A self-proclaimed internal humorist, Margo Stutts Toombs creates and dwells in wacky worlds. She loves to perform her work at Fringe festivals, art galleries or anywhere food and beverages are served. Her poetry and flash pieces dance in journals, anthologies, and chapbooks. Margo also loves to produce videos. Sometimes, these videos screen at film festivals. One of her favorite pastimes is co-hosting the monthly poetry/flash readings at the Archway Gallery in Houston, Texas. For 2024, Margo is the Newsletter Editor for Women in the Visual and Literary Arts, Houston, Tx. Check out her shenanigans at Margo Stutts Toombs - Performance Artist or on social media - https://www.facebook.com/margo.toombs/  Medieval Wolves, by Emma Carlow (UK) 2023 The Wolf, as an Example. Me, as Another. Interesting. A microscopic single-celled organism called Toxoplasma Gondii can change an animal's behaviour. It does so by tweaking the host's hormones, causing the creature to become bolder and more restless. Take the wolf. One that's infected is, according to researchers, ten times more likely than an uninfected wolf to abandon family and church in the Idyll Valley for the heathen east coast. And take me. I once had a pack in the valley. When I left, I was considered sick. Father prayed I wouldn't spread such rebellion. He forbade me to speak to my many little brothers and sisters. After all the long plain dresses Mother had sewed and the long hair she had braided, I wore tight jeans and shaved my head. Her dream of marrying me to the deacon's son died. I became a black sheep: ironic when discussing wolves. Daring decisions can be beneficial to an animal. I found a city job and a city life. I found Joshua, forgave his Biblical name. Daring decisions can be isolating. For the wolf, there's opportunity and strength in numbers when hunting big game, and warmth in winter when curled up together. It's cold all alone. Me, I have only Joshua. When I feared I was pregnant, the doctor told me more about Toxoplasma Gondii: it can cause toxoplasmosis and harm the baby. He tested me, pronounced me clear. Doc advised me not to clean the cat's litter box. Have my partner do it. Instead, Joshua got rid of the cat. Puss was a health risk and, he believed, a furry, purry distraction draining my motherly instincts. Researchers say it's unknown how the parasitic infection impacts overall reproduction rates. For example, can the bug drive a wolf to be honest? Finally declare it doesn't want to become a parent even though a mate may then curse having met such a selfish, abnormal beast, and leave? Also unclear is the microbe's impact upon survival. Me, I'm coping. Joshua wants lots of pups. That's what he calls babies. I'm collecting wolves. Joshua doesn't understand why, but, in this, he indulges me. Every month during my fertile window, he buys a new wolf figurine and sets it on a high shelf in our bedroom. I'm kept there, too. Healthy, but not as brave as I thought I was. Karen Walker Karen Walker writes short fiction in Ontario, Canada. Her work is in Reflex Fiction, Sunspot Lit, Unstamatic, The Disappointed Housewife, Retreat West, Five Minute Lit, Sundial Magazine, 100 Word Story, and others. She's at @MeKawalker883.
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September 2024
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