 What a wonderful Ekphrastic Marathon this has been, a Perfect 10 indeed! It was just amazing to follow your comments and drafts and freewrites on Facebook during Marathon-day, and it was just ever-so-amazing to read all your entries…some gorgeous classical structures as well as stunning free verse and “dadaisms”. Out of the huge amount of official submissions, Team TER has chosen 50 finalists, of which 30 are poetry finalists. So, without further ado…the winning poem of The Perfect 10 Marathon is: Where’s the Magic in this World? (to: Raven Transformation Mask, Charles Edenshaw, Canada/Haida, 1880s), written by Michelle Holland. Massive congratulations! Well done everyone, three hurrahs and bravo! Hope to see your work again soon at the Ekphrastic Challenges and TER's events. Be well, Kate Copeland Congratulations to Michelle Holland for her poem, "Where’s the Magic in this World?” winner of the poetry entries from the Perfect Ten Ekphrastic Marathon in July. The poetry winner was selected by editor Kate Copeland. All of the finalists in flash and poetry were selected by editors Kate Copeland, Lorette C. Luzajic, and Sandi Stromberg. The entries were read and selected blind. Approximately 50 marathon participants submitted work to the contest part of the marathon, including one to five works. The Perfect Ten Ekphrastic Marathon was our fourth annual marathon event. The goal of the marathon was simply to participate, and included a wide selection of art prompts, along with optional ideas to inspire ekphrases. Writers connected in a Facebook group to view the art, chat, share their drafts or ideas and more. They wrote fourteen drafts, with sprints changing every 30 minutes. There was a zoom after party to celebrate their accomplishments. Those who chose to submit to the contest portion had two weeks to revise their drafts and send them in. A huge congratulations to everyone who finished the marathon! It is an amazing, intense, fun experience, a day of pure creativity. A huge congratulations to everyone who entered their work in the contest portion. A huge congratulations to all the writers whose work was selected among the finalists! The flash selections are below, and the poetry selections are in a separate post. And a special congratulations to Yvonne Blumer for her winning story. We can't wait for the fifth annual marathon next July! Hope to see all of you there again, and many more of you joining the fun. love, Lorette  POETRY WINNER!!! Where’s the Magic in this World? With feathers I would not be surprised are mine, even if I left the island so many years ago. Not even counted by years, some other measurement, like an ancient edict. I say, stop making lists. Let go the terrible counting I do in my head every day: how many steps, how many minutes, this many miles on automatic. I allow all of it to pass because I have convinced myself doubt rules and the only way to compete, to stay delineated, to occupy space as matter, is to first believe my feet are on the ground, when I really want to fly, curve the wings around my shoulders like a late Renaissance fallen angel who burned down the fourth world I was born into, with raven eyes adopted from a carved mask created out of a northwest island culture. I live the mundane, sit among my chickens in the shade of Virginia Creeper that creates a canopy above us, know I am not supposed to name them, so I find a place to wait, mimic their contented clucking, my days of feathered conversation, bringing water to fill, scratch to scatter. I offer a light green grasshopper, palmed from the citronella plant, apologize before tossing to the gold-laced wyandottes. No magic, yet these words give me a mask, waiting for transformation, because incantations are beyond me. What break, maybe the rain building, will deliver the wings I desire, the feathers of the ravens who chuckle in the cottonwoods, large black weight on ancient branches? Michelle Holland Michelle Holland lives and writes in Chimayó, New Mexico. Her poetry publications include “Event Horizon,” in The Sound a Raven Makes, Tres Chicas Press, and Chaos Theory, Sin Fronteras Press. Marathon Poetry Finalists, in Alphabetical Order of the Author Jazz in the Garden The soothing sounds of jazz-- relaxing yet vibrant. Mellow music flows through my inner being like a warm shower of sunlight. The notes bounce and dance like electricity. It invigorates my senses-- heals my heartache. The rich timbre of each instrument transcends mere sound. It stirs my emotions and makes my melancholy disappear. Listening to jazz creates camaraderie. Strangers become kin. Children sway to the rhythm. Old men tap their feet. The air is thick with love. Barbara Ann Abbott Barbara Ann Abbott expresses her creativity through writing poetry and prose as well as other artistic endeavors. She has been published in several anthologies and continues to expand her portfolio to include her own body of work, which encompasses ekphrastic poetry and other genres. Retired from Corporate HR, she resides in Northern California’s wine country with her husband.  Bilingual Haiku لال مین دریا – صنوبر جھومتے ہیں گیتوں پر سرمئی-سبز کنکریوں کے * Red Main River – pinuses sway to the hymns of greenish-gray pebbles * باؤہاؤس نما باغیچہ – بھونرا اور جگنو لڑتے ہوئے غسل آفتابی کرتے ڈہلیا کے لئے * Bauhausian garden – beetle and firefly feud over a helios-basking dahlia * دریا کنارے قصبہ – میں لطف اندوز ہوتے سینکی ٹراؤٹ سے دورانِ سمندری بگلوں کی پُکار * Riverine town – I savour-savour grilled trout amidst seagulls’ ha-ha-ha * موسم بہار کے سرور – بھورا الو کو کو پکارتے ہوئے شنکوں کی جھنکار میں * Spring delights – tawny owl coos coos as the strobili chime Saad Ali Saad Ali (b. 1980 CE) is a poet-philosopher & literary translator from the UK and Pakistan. His new collection of poems is Owl Of Pines: Sunyata. He has translated Lorette C. Luzajic’s ekphrases into Urdu. His work appears in The Ekphrastic Review, The Mackinaw, Synchronized Chaos, Lothlorien, Lotus-eater, BRAWL Lit., Pandemonium Journal, ImmaginePoesia, Purple Stallion Review, and various anthologies. He has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and Best Microfiction. FB/IG: @owlofpines.  Apparel We all drape and cloak our bodies, whether to conceal or reveal, fade or emblazon, the close caress and fall of cloth varying with thread and weave, fibres of plant or fur or refined organic hydrocarbon chains spun to threads, threads crissed and crossed and sheared and sewn. We thrust our limbs through armholes and sleeves and necklines, cloth snug and close, or open and loose, the fabrics conforming with folds and wrinkles and wraps that bulge coyly or blatantly depending on the bone and flesh beneath that give it form and substance. Then we wash and scrub and launder, remove all hints of ourselves from cotton and satin and wool: skin cells and sweat stains, aromas and smells. All the clothes’ memories of us gone so they may briefly float in air, take on the dancing, transient shapes of breezes and wind, live for a few hours free of all the pride and shame, all the human vanity and frailty that they so successfully hide, or make, oblivious to us, so embarrassingly apparent. Roy J. Beckemeyer Roy J. Beckemeyer’s latest poetry collections include The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023) and Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book was Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2015, 2020, and 2024) and for Best of the Net (2018) and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019. His author’s page is at royjbeckemeyer.com.  Communique What if our only method of communicating was through images on our skin; images that would appear as we thought them, but that would fade after 24 hours. Suppose we had an unlimited palette, but a finite canvas: the epidermis of trunk and limbs, neck and face, palms and arches. The more voluble among us would shave our heads, emblazon our foreheads, carry magnifying glasses for cramped spidery messages inscribed on the whorls of our ears. Our conversations would become dances, nuance and inflections finely choreographed, complex arguments conveyed by gymnastics. The more articulate individuals might be contortionists, and body language would take on a wholly new and richer meaning. Roy J. Beckemeyer Roy J. Beckemeyer’s latest poetry collections include The Currency of His Light (Turning Plow Press, 2023) and Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar Press, 2019). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark Books, 2018) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press, 2018) comprises ekphrastic poems inspired by modern artists’ depictions of angels. His first book was Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City Press, 2014). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2015, 2020, and 2024) and for Best of the Net (2018) and was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019. His author’s page is at royjbeckemeyer.com.  Outlook He said we’ll start with the ladder and she said no, we should start with the house. No, he said, if we build the ladder first, we will be able to reach higher to build the house. She said you will need the house first to rest the ladder against and he rolled his eyes and said no no we need the ladder, what good is a half- built house and no way to reach the roof. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, then he said he’d already built it. She threw her arms in the air, why does she even bother giving her opinion and he hooked the ladder on the air, dug its feet into the ground climbed up and up to pour cement for the foundation. She was so angry, she stood with her hands on her hips, red cheeked and fuming, not seeing the miracle of what he had done. Yvonne Blomer Yvonne Blomer has published six books of poetry, most recently Death of Persephone: A Murder (Caitlin Press, 2024). Her work has won awards and appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, the U.S., the UK, and Japan. She has an MA with Distinction from the University of East Anglia and lives on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people. She was the City of Victoria’s poet laureate from 2015-2018.  Serpent Eels scream through their teeth. Did you know? They’re fully outfitted. Imagine the gnashing and then The more when they are cooked And eaten by the creatures that fear them most. Now ingested into their very cells. Do the fearful not imagine how Those memories now grow into themselves, How their own eyes stop blinking, How their jaws open with a new scream Out of the belly so full it might Split. Kate Bowers Kate Bowers (she/her) is a Pittsburgh based writer who has been published in Sheila-Na-Gig, Rue Scribe, McQueen’s Quinterly, The Thomas Wolfe Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and So It Goes! Her work appears also in the anthology Pandemic Evolution: Poets Respond to the Art of Matthew Wolfe, by Hayley Haugen (Editor) and Matthew Wolfe (Contributor) and in the anthology The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain: Pittsburgh Poems, Doralee Brooks (Editor). Kate is an alumna of Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project and serves as a volunteer social media team member for The Ekphrastic Review.  In Nature He Trusts I know him as Pabbi, my heritage, a papa from my mother’s line. Folk admire his art – in Reykjavik the gallery is huge and light. They display his work on white plinths and white walls, open the doors to a ‘Floral Fantasy.’ Wine is poured and visitors lift eyewear to peruse, follow hushly. There’s the creak of new leather when feet lean to Pabbi’s world. Petals whorl in plush purple and grain-gold. Florets rise like peacock eyes. Poppy seeds explode as dots. Leaves drift in unallotted air, freely curl and furl. There’s speak of Pabbi’s mind, how turbulence makes great art. As if trauma were a talent, his flee to the fields enough. As if breath were enough. And what luck for pretty plants to guide his brush. But when Pabbi walks in, in worn-out boots, zigzags round the living, it’s them he fears: the civilised folk. To him, the plinths are whipping posts and a white wind blows and when they lash – again, again – he calls for his pa who died when he was four. Calls for his ma, poor ma, who laboured too hard to raise her child. For a week he bleeds, lays with his scars on a bed of dried grass. Rasps his pain to the open sky. For balm, he hallucinates flowers. After, he loads his back with palettes and pots. Re-enters the forbidden wild. Steals bread, leans to a rock for home. He spreads his parchment and steadies his arm for harebell, campion, angelica’s lime and repeats and replicates: harebell, campion, angelica’s lime. Green upon green; mauve, then shades of mauve. Pabbi wets his brush – again, again – frantic purples fall and float. The landscape is arctic thyme; he gathers sprigs, crushes them to his nose. Folk hold open the gallery door, raise their glass to drink to him. But Pabbi turns, ghosts his back. Tilts instead to the skylight, the blue pouring in. Vanessa Crannis Vanessa has pieces in Writers’ Forum and The Ekphrastic Review and has been shortlisted in two competitions. She runs or swims every day, aiming for a triathlon and a third marathon. Vanessa is happiest out-of-doors in nature, and is currently reviving her interest in UK moths. A late starter, she is also on the lookout for old records, and is discovering whether music might move her as much as words.  Oh Daughter, Mine Within the folds of your silken gown, and the ruffled edge of your sweeping collar a code emerges. Your thoughtful stare, tranquil air urges me to decipher that which travels from your look-see to a hand poised atop a portfolio of blank, white, virginal pages. I hear the rat-ta tap-tap of your pencil about to un-secret what may be the message from the muse within. Karen FitzGerald Karen FitzGerald is a genre-fluid writer from Sonoma County California. When not cycling, hiking, working a day job, and doing Happy Hours with friends and family, she is found with pen to page producing her debut novel in between writing bouts of poetry, essays, short stories and such.  Woman in Bloom You are lovely, in full flower. In fact, you are hiding behind roses, of fullest and darkest of crimson-- They block your view of a glory of pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the blood long ago dried and forgotten. Surely their thorns scratch your face? Once, I bit into thorns, have eaten a few rose petals. Strangely, there is nourishment in pain. Lovely one, no need to brace yourself against the future; they are not coming for you. Neither are the pigeons… they only come to feed from your out slung arms, your perch of despair. Their fluttering will help you take your first tentative step. Beth Fox  Fear Green—for More Than Envy Oh citizens, workers, you worship a false god. Do not betray your heritage! Do not turn on the white ibis, who guides you, for temporary wealth. With this Charter, you sign away more than your goods, your cotton, gold, and oil— you sign away your dignity and your pride. The green face of greed is a harsh mistress whose tenacles and branches will beat you and your children until there is nothing left but the sandstorm that blows in your eyes and refuses to leave until you are blind. Robin Gabbert Robin Gabbert is the winner of RW’s 2025 Fran Claggett-Holland Award. In 2024, her poem “Invisible” was a finalist in the San Francisco Writers’ Conference Contest and she was long-listed for Frontier Poetry’s(Not) In Love Tanka Challenge. Her full-length book of poetry Somehow, I Haven’t Drowned will be published this fall.  Late-Stage Body Art even watching the needle-like proboscis inking deep into dermis blood-red / and black / and black / and black / indigo / tropical green c o l o u r s tattooing in the West an act of creative rebellion a middle finger to established decorum even as my question floats into the stratosphere how many doctors sport tattoos? body paintings of calaveras in rainbow jewel tones butterflies roses and the names of so many dead parents tatuaje not indigenous skin stitching with whale bone or caribou and ink-soaked thread cruising cutis nor the months-long coming of age Polynesian hand taps ancestral stories engraved into tegument even as the medical examiner in Philly smug in his theories tattoos= bad character =drugs even the Thug Life phrase poet Nikki Giovanni tatted onto her inner left forearm commiserating Afeni Shakur’s loss of her son even so I wait to hand off my stethoscope for this blossoming of my second career before etching with permanence my middle finger onto my mid-life Black skin Joanne Godley Joanne Godley’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review Crab Orchard Review, Juked, The Kenyon Review Online, The Massachusetts Review, among others. She is a member of Annie Finch’s Poetry Witch Community. She is an Anaphora Arts Fellow in poetry and fiction. Her first poetry collection, How the Black Panthers Fell From the Sky, won the Naomi Long Madgett award for 2025 and will be published in 2026.  Sappho’s Last Lyric Dare I do this thing my soul disdains, while the wings of grief aflutter in my chest, like a bird too frail to face the darkening sky? As poet, I hunger for that which lovers crave, the touch, the taste, of passion’s ripe desire. But I pine for him who shut his heart to me. So here I stand upon these Leucadian cliffs, awash with rapturous sorrow. Were I to leap into the sea, would not the waves engulf me with their fury? I would not try to swim. Perhaps, the poet’s plight is that we know not of which we write. Perhaps we’re doomed to gaze upon bounty, we cannot hope to feast. O’, Phaon! My lyre, I leave ashore–as I embrace this vengeful sea! Joanne Godley Joanne Godley’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review Crab Orchard Review, Juked, The Kenyon Review Online, The Massachusetts Review, among others. She is a member of Annie Finch’s Poetry Witch Community. She is an Anaphora Arts Fellow in poetry and fiction. Her first poetry collection, How the Black Panthers Fell From the Sky, won the Naomi Long Madgett award for 2025 and will be published in 2026.  Performance in Trafalgar Square, by Sheila Legge In Conversation with Joy Harjo’s I Give You Back. I gave back the fear. Back to the ones who corralled and killed my ancestors like they were cattle. Back to the ones who want the same for me and mine. The ones who locked their apertures on contempt. I gave back their gaping maw, ravenous gullet, ouroboros. I stepped aside and let it devour itself. And then I stood still in the centre of town square. Stood tall leaning into the wind, arms outspread becoming the figurehead of my own ship, vessel for those who come after. birds in my hands my hair blooming tulips. Maureen Kane Maureen Kane lives in Bellingham, WA with her family. Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals. She is a Sue Boynton Poetry Walk Award winner. Her book of poems are The Phoenix Requires Ashes: Poems for the Journey and Mycelium: Poetry of Connection. Her workbook A Guide Back to You: A workbook for exploring who you are and staying true to yourself is a Chanticleer International Books Awards First Place category winner.  It Wasn’t the Flowers that sprouted from the pores on her face, watered only by the drip drip drip from her eyes because there’d been no rain all summer. It wasn’t the pigeons that alighted upon her hands. Or the perfect thin belt clipped around her perfect thin waist. Or the bracelets clasped to her delicate wrists. No. It was only the sheer black gloves that her mother commented on. Not because they were sheer. Not because they were black. But because they bunched up and wrinkled along her perfectly thin arms. Louella Lester Louella Lester is a writer/photographer in Winnipeg, Canada, author of Glass Bricks (At Bay Press), contributing editor at New Flash Fiction Review, and is included in Best Microfiction 2024. Her writing and/or photography appears/is forthcoming in: Cleaver, subTerrain, SoFloPoJo, Neither Fish Nor Foul, Ink Sweat & Tears, Six Sentences, Temple in a City, Switch, Gooseberry Pie, Hoolet’s Nook, Roi Faineant, Mad Swirl, Dog Throat, Paragraph Planet, and a variety of other journals.  Welcome to the Circus A sightless, flightless polka-dot bird rides in, balanced on an unhappy cellophane tape dispenser, flanked by a skinny one-handed ringmaster a ravenous beast, ribs showing, unsatisfied by a single slice of watermelon a lazy, hammocked sloth a naked tri-horn snail, chasing its ghost shell Through a window, a peeping Thomasina smirks: Not my scene, she says, but she bought all the tickets. Meanwhile, I’m inching up the water tower, hoping for a baptism, or a dive, either one: death-defying Skyler Lovelace Skyler Lovelace, a native of Wichita, Kansas, delights in expressing her experience of the world in words and pigments. Her paintings feature landscapes composed of splatters and drips, collaged portraits of quizzical bison, and collaborations with other painters and writers. Skyler writes poetry in open and closed forms, favoring the sonnet or something “sonnet-ish.” Skyler creates her art and facilitates poetry workshops from The Studio School in Wichita, a repurposed 1924 elementary school.  Ghostly Vision Dim the lights, then tell me, is this the one, you, too, resurrect in your mirror, the one just out of sight in your peripheral vision, who, once bidden, always arrives whenever you slink past the shiny rectangle that once held who you are? This nightmare of long hair and horns, dog face and blurred cloak stained by the sepia of shadows: not me coming to get you, not you coming to get me, but a different self, descending upon the unsuspecting other, everything sinister unstoppable. And all those helpless soldiers-- dying or trying to flee? Maybe you recognize them from some other life when you thought your sword mattered, when you thought you’d eventually be free. Marjorie Maddox Professor Emerita of English at Commonwealth University, Presence assistant editor, and WPSU-FM Poetry Moment host, Marjorie Maddox has published 17 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation; Begin with a Question; In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind; Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For; Small Earthly Space; Seeing Things; Hover Here (forthcoming). In addition, she has published a story collection, four children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and Keystone Poetry. www.marjoriemaddox.com  Trousseau Stitch. Purple. Yellow. Green. Stitchstitchstitch. Blood. White. Stitch. Linen. Purple. Yellow. Stitchstitch. Breathe. White. Fingers. Green. Napkins. Stitch. Thread. Purple. Curtains. Yellow. White. Night. Day. Night. Day. Stitchstitchstitchstitch. Heart. Stitch. Green. Tears. Stitch. Purple. Apron. Stitch. Yellow. Secrets. White. Purple. Mother. Green. Stitch. Broken. Stitch. Ring. Stitchstitch. Yellow. Flower. Stitch. Wedding. Stitch. Home. Stitch. Green. Hearth. Stitch. Stitchstitchstitch. Stitchstitchstitch. Isabella Mori Isabella Mori writes pretty much everything that's not nailed down: Fiction (a 15th century monk whose best friend is a comfrey plant), nonfiction ("All the Way from the Eocene on Highway 400"), and poetry (lots of haiku!) Their great love is hybrid work, like in their latest book Believe Me, which combines poetry, stories, interviews and research. They run Canada's most unusual poetry prize, Muriel's Journey, which has two first prizes.  Damaged Of all the things I’ve broken Promises, vows, and vases Of these I’ve never spoken Loss is not a token Even though there are traces Of all the things I’ve broken Torn up letters, bills, poems I soak in They put me through my paces Of these I’ve never spoken This desert of damage will remain unspoken Buried in all the right places For all the things I’ve broken Except if I’m plain spoken You had one of those faces Of which I’ve never spoken For that loss I am heartbroken There’s nothing to replace it Of this I’ve never spoken Amy Phimister Amy Phimister retired in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. She is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and has been published by WFOP, Yardstick Books, several anthologies and The Ekphrastic Review, and was twice a finalist for the Hal Prize. She published a children’s book in 2021 called ABC the Animals, a scavenger hunt through the alphabet.  Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic & then take the Kitchen Knife Dada, using a tea towel or new-fangled paper towels, wipe it clean of spilled guts and spilled pilsners and spilled blood. Place it with gusto in the drawer next to the icebox, or next to the sink & then one hundred years later take the Kitchen Knife Dada from the junk drawer and lickety-spit flit it back and forth on the whetting stone da da da da sharpen its arts, perfected through beer bellies of the past, prepare the Kitchen Knife Dada for the culinary needs of 21st Century palates. Cut cut cut from the old cloths new patterns, new trims. Da DA! New fashions and modes of being in the world. Take the Kitchen Knife Dada, heft the hilt, its weight should cantilever the wrist back and forth. Let it seesaw. Dah duh dah duh dah duh. Let the Kitchen Knife Dada do the work for you. Its sharp should slice and carve automatically. Trim the fat of the old ways, leaner and less mean, prep for new recipes. Take the Kitchen Knife Dada, make its long disuse a fact historical, slice off the greedy, grabby hands of the takers, slit the throats and tongues of the prevaricators and rally-cry rubes. Chop bloated capitalists into bite-size bits. Feed the poor, eat the rich. The Kitchen Knife Dada will fill plates with new delights you didn’t know you should have. Dinner is served. Bon appétit! David Siller Poet, translator, and film, TV and comic book buff, David Siller studied Francophone literature and knows more about French hip hop than you could imagine. His poems have appeared in 100 Poets Against The War, Newtown Literary, and elsewhere. His first collection, tentatively titled ...& Other Improprieties, is forthcoming from PGNP. Queens, NY is home, where he currently teaches French at St. John’s University; his soul wanders the streets of Paris.  The Ghostly Vision of the Ghostly Vision So long misunderstood I have stood in vigil at the gate of bone and shadow of the afters and its transitions. Most times I usher you to the heaven or hell you’ve decided-- I tell you your path because I have read your lives-- the choices you’ve made your receipts, your invoices, the ins and outs of your ledger. But lately I stand in confusion—aghast at the gates open, filing through them children—limbless husks children—riddled whole punched with bullets and petty grievances children—crusted and burned children—crumpled and crushed children—tattered, torn, ripped, confettied children—hollowed carved folded. What have your gods done to you? David Siller Poet, translator, and film, TV and comic book buff, David Siller studied Francophone literature and knows more about French hip hop than you could imagine. His poems have appeared in 100 Poets Against The War, Newtown Literary, and elsewhere. His first collection, tentatively titled ...& Other Improprieties, is forthcoming from PGNP. Queens, NY is home, where he currently teaches French at St. John’s University; his soul wanders the streets of Paris.  Scuttlebutt of Myth talks of spring-- bloom and flower the body tingle, the body echo, the body goose; wind kiss skin turbulent flurries draft around a form in space, tongue charting thin piqued separation of surface and blood bone nerve. David Siller Poet, translator, and film, TV and comic book buff, David Siller studied Francophone literature and knows more about French hip hop than you could imagine. His poems have appeared in 100 Poets Against The War, Newtown Literary, and elsewhere. His first collection, tentatively titled ...& Other Improprieties, is forthcoming from PGNP. Queens, NY is home, where he currently teaches French at St. John’s University; his soul wanders the streets of Paris.  In the Beginning At the confluence of rivers, a bird once sang and stories rose and flowed with the tides, with the tides, civilizations rose and fell-- always there are demons, sometimes there are men. There are men who sometimes become demons, they slither like serpents, bring storms of fire, serpents, the ancient bewitchers, beguile and promise: You will have everything you wished. What do wish for? What were you promised in this land of sand, statues, and stories? The stories are carried by wind-swept time, the lush fertile crescent becomes barren and dead but the stories do not die, they rise from the confluence of rivers, where a bird once sang. Merril D. Smith Merril D. Smith is a Pushcart-nominated poet. Her work has been published widely in poetry journals and anthologies. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. Her second collection Held Within the Folds of Time is forthcoming (2025). She writes from southern New Jersey. Find her at Bluesky: @merrildsmith.bsky.social; Instagram: mdsmithnj Blog: merrildsmith.org  This is Who We Are, but Still, We Dream We are Sisyphus, there is always laundry infinite and indeterminate. We are bodies in motion, constantly shifting, bound by gravity, longing for wings to fly-- if only we could transform our mass into energy, convert our blues, reds, and greens into star-white light flowing in and from us-- this is our physics, the curve of a sheet, an apron glimmering with feathered fractals, a universe washed clean. Merril D. Smith Merril D. Smith is a Pushcart-nominated poet. Her work has been published widely in poetry journals and anthologies. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. Her second collection Held Within the Folds of Time is forthcoming (2025). She writes from southern New Jersey. Find her at Bluesky: @merrildsmith.bsky.social; Instagram: mdsmithnj Blog: merrildsmith.org  All Mixed Up in Blue -after Bob Dylan’s "Tangled up in Blue" So now I’m goin’ back again/I got to get to her somehow… -Bob Dylan, "Tangled up in Blue" (Read to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue.” If you’d like to grab your acoustic, here are the chords I use. There are many other chord variations. Have fun!) C Am Late one evenin’ the moon was burnin’, F C G I was startled awake C. Am thinkin’ about that night she danced, F. C G her beauty made me ache. C Am Her family thought when they looked at me F. C G I wasn’t what she’d need. C Am They never could take Ma’s ethnic ways, F C Papa’s accent was an “alley breed.” Em Am So I was standin’ down on old King Street Em Am snow pilin’ on my boots, Em Am lookin’ toward the warm west coast Em Dm G heaven knows I felt abused, but that was no excuse, C F C F all mixed up in blue. She was twenty when we first met, ballet dancer at heart, but I arrived and messed things up, I never thought that it would come apart. We’d meet at dark just the two of us, when there was no one around. This went on for a couple a years, ‘til she told me she had found someone, she said, to take my place, what could I do but bounce? I heard her say, and it hit real hard, “Now’s the time for this, ya’ gotta admit,” all mixed up in blue. I got a job in hill-filled town reading water-meters for a time, but I hated every step I took, most days I never did smile. So I left and I never did work another job that took me apart. But there was one thing that I couldn’t shake- a vision that touched my heart – way back when in that gritty town I seen her in a summer skirt. She told me years later, I remember you, too, words that sank like a nasty cut, all mixed up in blue. She was workin’ in a local dive and I stopped in for a drink. I was sure she didn’t know I was there. What a naïve thing to think. That’s what I thought so I hung around right up until closing time. “You didn’t think I’d forget?” she said, her voice was like a string of chimes. I lowered my head, embarrassed as hell, but I could feel her smile. That felt real nice so I looked up, surprised when she took my hands, held ‘em for a while, all mixed up in blue. We went back to her place then, and she gave me a glass of wine. “I’s sure you didn’t know it was me in the bar. That crushed these feelings of mine.” Then she asked if she could sing a song she’d written long ago, said she played it every night every night cuz she thought she’d know she’d never see me again. I was thinkin’ the same as her- it was over years ago, and that we were done, but I was wrong, all mixed up in blue. I lived with them on Pinney Drive in a place down under the garage. The guy next door played his music loud and quiet became a mirage. Then I heard that her man was dealing meth and he paced the place like a ghost. Nothing she owned was hers anymore. She felt maybe she’d been dosed. Then finally their fling blew up and I became remote. I reacted the way I usually do, like a man grabbed ‘round the throat and I took off all mixed up in blue. Enough time gone by and I’m goin’ back, gotta find her no matter what. That whole clan we used to hang with, I wouldn’t know ‘em if they showed up. One became a lawyer, another became a cop. One became a writer, another was a homeless guy. I don’t remember much, it happened way too fast, but I gotta get to her, no matter how hard I try. So I am drivin’ too many miles a day movin’ from town to town. The two of us, we agreed on things, but we’d argue and then calm down every now and then, all mixed up in blue. John L. Stanizzi John L. Stanizzi is author many collections including Ecstasy Among Ghosts and The Tree That Lights The Way Home. His work has been widely published, including in Prairie Schooner, The New York Quarterly, Rattle, and more. His work has been translated into Italian. John is the Flash Fiction Editor of Abstract Magazine TV. A former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar, and New England Poet of the Year (1998), John has just been awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Non-Fiction – 2021 - from the Connecticut Office of the Arts and Culture for work on his new memoir. He teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry, CT. https://www.johnlstanizzi.com  Night is a Woman Hauling Her Children across indifferent skies dropping poppies. Each petal lands a dream, stems its source in an ancient dirt, motions the moon to carry it upward. She gives wide allowances for sleep, her children, who are restless, bruised by daylight, playing aimlessly and unanchored. She knows where the hurt is, the deeper shadows under skin and leaves. She tenderizes what cannot be seen feeds it dark but promising potions, puts in motion all the resting poses stretches and yawns, quiet breaths, tosses her children into beds of pink poppies sinking cool as she crosses the warming sky, facing forward always forward. Rebecca Surmont Rebecca Surmont has a love of corn fields, rivers, trains and funk. Her poems have been in Last Leaves, The Orchards, RockPaperPoem, Amethyst Review, Hare’s Paw, Eunoia Review, Nature of our Times, Steel Jackdaw, Amethyst Review, Crowstep Poetry Journal among others. She lives in MN where she works as a leadership consultant.  Rage Throwing the scissors Bullseye in the closet door a gash in measure with her force. She would not say later how it happened shame hanging heavily grief hiding behind it or, the stabbing of a mattress and how clean it felt after, the ease of it all no blood, no foul (she thought). One broken dish its many faces (her own) as shards across the floor. She remembers only the shattering and repentance in cleaning up, tidying an inner house as if for fresh guests. Yes, she ripped photographs, letters, tossed mementos, lit them on fire watched them crisp in an iron pit anger smoldering like incantation. Clean sweeping, she called it. It all came back that day years later except for not remembering what led up to those moments. How time can crush their power, erase history. The old damage lay like still life in memory without backdrops, without frames. Rebecca Surmont Rebecca Surmont has a love of corn fields, rivers, trains and funk. Her poems have been in Last Leaves, The Orchards, RockPaperPoem, Amethyst Review, Hare’s Paw, Eunoia Review, Nature of our Times, Steel Jackdaw, Amethyst Review, Crowstep Poetry Journal among others. She lives in MN where she works as a leadership consultant.  Lordy Mercy I heard your story, Robert Johnson, how you could rip the harmonica and jaw harp like the night wind in the pines, how sorrow clotted in your soul and the blues burst forth when you lost your kind-hearted woman and baby yet unborn. How, like the honeybee attracted to ultra-violet blooms, you longed for unholy manna from the up-and-coming Son. From itinerants mastering their music on street corners, in barbershops, in graveyards under the ghostly shadows of moonlight. How you bowed the knee at the crossroads at midnight and bargained with the devil to blues up, and like dried beans in warm water, you filled the whole Delta with story, fire, and song until the Stealthy One claimed your soul in summer, ensuring your membership in myth’s Twenty-seven Forever Club. Mr. Johnson, if we had possession over tomorrow’s Judgment Day. If we could have possession over just that one day. We’d award you peace and love and the soul winner’s crown. For life. For the long life you did not have. For the music you were not fated to chart. Jo Taylor Jo Taylor is a retired, 35-year English teacher from Georgia. In 2021 she published her first collection of poems, Strange Fire, and in 2024, she published her second book of poems, Come Before Winter (Kelsay Books). Jo has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. She enjoys morning walks, playing with her two grandsons, and collecting and reading cookbooks. You can connect with her at https://www.jotaylorwrites.com/  Garden of Music Eden arrived in a saxophone & double bass & in the naked bodies playing them & milling around in shades of nutmeg/ beige/bronze/ivory/umber/ silver/jet/pearl aqua. Soft hills gathered the musers & the speakers & the players to their coral & orchid skirts while the trees with their afro’d heads arranged themselves at gibbous distances, held their own conversations. Sky withheld sun & moon so that overhead was nothing-- no storm, no scorch, no wind infiltrated their various joys/ murmurs/giggles/guffaws/ amens/ain’t it so/bless me/ trombone’s creamy slide. Taunja Thomson Taunja Thomson is co-author of Frame & Mount the Sky (2017), a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry, as well the author as Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She is a lover of animals, art, trees, surrealism, black and white movies, walking in autumn rains, feeding wild birds in winter, playing in spring mud, & bat-watching in summer. Her first full-length collection of poems, Plunge, was published by Uncollected Press in 2023.  Kalighat We are all spinning skeletons. When we are not dizzy, we die. We inherit the bloodshed of ancestors, whether we want to or not. We have all killed—the insect on our windshield, under our tires, the patch of land that supported deer & raccoons & monarchs & coneflowers now paved over & over. Only when we are over do we cease killing, only when we end are we innocent like soil without footprints. We blame the cat for pouncing on the sparrow & devouring it, but there is no karma for anyone. There is only spinning, quick glances at our surroundings, ground coming at us fast. So caress the cat, feed him blood from the wounds under your nipples, devour sky, lick ocean’s brine, let wind’s roar fill your ears, rub spring on your soles, love your own blue skin. Taunja Thomson Taunja Thomson is co-author of Frame & Mount the Sky (2017), a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry, as well the author as Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She is a lover of animals, art, trees, surrealism, black and white movies, walking in autumn rains, feeding wild birds in winter, playing in spring mud, & bat-watching in summer. Her first full-length collection of poems, Plunge, was published by Uncollected Press in 2023.
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The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
January 2026
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