Dear Ekphrastic Challengees, Thank you so much for submitting your Lang-pieces to TER’s ekphrastic writing challenge. It was just wonderful to have received so many pieces; it was just wonderful to have read how your words have been prompted by Katja Lang’s Cloud Shadows… and may I say: beautifully prompted indeed! Congratulations to every single writer that has sent in work; enjoy the selection you find published below. And here’s to you, amazing Lorette, and to TER! Thank you all, be good, Kate Copeland I Walk They follow me down this winding path feeling both guardians and stalkers, watching my every step as if they know where I go, even if I do not; hands shoved deep into pockets for warmth, or to hide the shaking I can’t stop. I walk slowly, a lone figure between fields and patchy trees, swooping noisily as if to warn or greet, I’m unsure which, but I feel less alone, more like being escorted into unknown territory, back to the past, moving ever forward toward something unseen. The snow lies serenely quiet; my footsteps mar the cold silence, rhythmic crunch along this path I do not know, I plod along, their shadows are my companion, pushing me on. Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson is a long time poet and lover of ekphrastic poetry, whose works appear in various journals, including Misfit, Blue Heron Review, Open Door and The Ekphrastic Review. Dickson has been a guest editor for several journals, has served on two poetry boards and advocates for captive elephants. She shares her home with two rescued cats, Cam and Jojo. ** Lost Shadows Along the streambed the straight rain pocked the running current sometimes catching the cloud shadows. The wetslick leaves on the greenwall of leaning young trees blurred as they moved and we lifted our faces and found some clues taking each other close through the damp clothes that clung like a layer of skin. We had come here to watch birds but excited only crows: inkblack, black wing, wingspread into night. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes taught courses in global religions for almost 40 years. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including: Ekstasis, The Ekphrastic Review, The Seventh Quarry, Last Stanza, and The Montreal Review, among others. His poetry and art collaborations have been published by The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina. ** Conjoined A misty, sometimes wispy fog, those passing clouds, ethereal, of shadows, shades - a ghostly term, as sometimes wights amongst wraith graves, grey area, daunt spectral taunt, a phantom though clear sight eclipsed. The corvidae will float above - between the clouds and landed earth - pandemic birds announcing death, the ravens, rooks or crows about with jackdaws, choughs and magpie thieves, a blotting litter of the skies Here’s melancholia, line-hatched incised matrix by stroke, browed burr, by diamond or carbide tips to steel, bare copper needled plate. Like manuscript now duly glossed, intaglio in family, from Housebook Master through the years, a drypoint exercise in gear. Above the dado, hill-top trees, horizon line, point vanish block, but nearer, lower, road through fields, lone figure, dark with shading laid, suggesting sun despite the bleak, as if those clouds deserted rôle. Apart from height above clear light, the grainy bank describes the ground except from patchwork layout there; bold starker markings stripped above like ridge or furrow of the tools, in counter, cut glyphs, vertical. Some order, chaos, yet conjoined? Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Never Returning Birds fleeing the land, sensing dangerous weather, never returning. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** Grief Sweeps like an emotional tsunami washes out nature's vibrant hues, life morphs into a somber shade of gray. Heavy rains refuse to abate tears trudge through open fields, overhead, birds soar unnoticed while sorrow clings like wet denim flaunting its unshakable curves of agony. Rapt in sadness, the afflicted takes a solitary stroll down the path of uncertainty. Elaine Sorrentino A huge fan of ekphrasis, Elaine Sorrentino has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Writing in a Women’s Voice, The Poetry Porch, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Panoply, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at wildamorris.blogspot.com. ** The Road We Walk We’ll walk this road until it ends Past trees and birds and fields of corn Becoming lovers and best friends And as our road the Lord extends And adds more hours from when we’re born We’ll walk together till it ends We’ll cling hand-fast when life offends And share the wounds from barb and thorn Because we’re lovers and we’re friends We’ll stay the course that He intends When through the mud and mire we’re drawn And walk along until it ends We’ll share the sunshine that He sends Before the time comes when we mourn The loss of lover and best friend And while our road has curves and bends We’ll travel on for we have sworn To walk this road until it ends Remaining lovers and best friends Alison R Reed Alison R Reed has been writing for many years. She won the 2020 Writers Bureau Poetry competition and has been published both online and in various anthologies, most recently the first Morecambe Poetry Festival anthology. She enjoys experimenting with different poetic forms, especially ones which take her out of her comfort zone. She is a long-time member of Walsall Writers’ Circle. ** Following I waited for the lonely man seems I waited half my life. I waited till the colours poured out of existence. I waited till the birds fell from the clouds like black stones. I waited till there was nothing but scribbles and impressions. Then he came, the lonely man. Along a road that was only an idea, where his shadow was my eye. We met with a certain embrace, knowing the time at last had come and with his arm across my shoulder he led me back to home. Marc Brimble Marc Brimble lives in Spain and when he's not drinking tea or wandering about, he teaches English. ** Snowstorms Iron bars and grills, mute sunlight in winter huts are like mildew; there are the passing signs of snowstorms that exempt us from lodging bigger fears. * Though hammer and nails await commission, only the lonely hunger for confidence in this solitude, confident that the mark on the estuary will come. * Nature is never hideous. The farthest we come, the more merciful will be its promotion. Time Tenderness Imagination are the bare essentials - all survive here. Prithvijeet Sinha The writer is Prithvijeet Sinha, a proud resident of the cultural epicenter that is Lucknow. His prolific published credits encompass poetry, musings on the city, cinema, anthologies, journals of national and international repertoire as well as a blog. His life-force resides in writing, in the art of self-expression. ** And On the Third Day You Might Talk to Me If I see any bears in the forest, I’ll let you know but for now, all I see are black birds. Not blackbirds. Just birds that are black and faceless. No eyes or beaks. And some look like they’ve lost their wings; hover suspended in the sky. Or are they lying dead in the snowfield behind the forest? Depends on your perspective. Just like that fight we had when I said you were too black and white. And you said I’d be better off alone, alone alone alone, that’s what you really want without a monochrome man in your picture. And I said self-pity is a dead tree along a lonely path that leads to a forest where hungry bears hide waiting for wing-less, eye-less, beak-less birds to topple from the sky and one man’s shadow is a lost soul clinging to his feet. When I turned around rain was falling and you were a sharp pencil stroke in the distance. Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman is a poet living and writing in Tabourie Lake, NSW South Coast, in unceded Yiun country. She enjoys seeing her poetry published in journals and anthologies around the world. She was most recently published in Mindfood, and was their 2023 Poetry Award winner. ** Shadows in the Clouds I bought it. I had to. The first time I saw it, the painting called to me, instantly captivating, pulling me in to its restful embrace. Black and white and grays of soft solitude, the kind where you can hear the silence. Well, not true silence. As my son once explained, all those years ago, if you were in true silence, you would hear the hum of your heartbeat and drown in deafening buzz. But the painting conjured human silence. The flap of a dozen wings and the whisper of blades of grass playing hide and seek in the gentle breeze. I propped it against the entrance wall. I meant to hang it. Soon. But it’s hard to decide where. I bought it with barely a thought to actual placement. It’s black and white. It could fit anywhere, right? But small houses with too many doors and windows and lazy decorators who collect boxes of to-be-assembled furniture are a challenge for wall art. I walked by it day after day and finally noticed the lone figure in the middle of the painting. How had I missed it before? I’d mistaken it for a brush or a tree. It was barely a smudge of saunterer casting a long shadow. The only shadow in the landscape. Now, when I passed the painting on my way out the door, I heard the paced gravel footsteps, tick-tock, above the whipping wind. I decided it to try it out in the bedroom and hoisted it on the console. The person on the path walked and walked and I counted their steps, left – right – left – right, crunching, shadow static, as it walked and walked towards the smudge of black trees they never reached. Why was the shadow so long? Where was the sun? The grass on the left side suddenly shimmered and rippled like water. Maybe the path was a riverbank? The sound changed. Graveled steps and the ripples of a creek, a brook, a lake. Frogs, maybe? The painting seeped into my dreams that night, like a lullaby, like a nightmare. I became that person walking, walking, with an ever-growing shadow despite the dense fog. A fog so dense it wrapped itself around me, holding me, pulling me back, although I leaned forward, tasting the wind, the cold, tasteless metal of snow. Snow! That’s what the white was: snow. White winter. Stark dark landscape with leafless trees of brittle branches that barely moved as the wind hissed coils around their trunks. And yet, there was the long lone shadow that suggested the sun. There were birds circling, soaring, thriving in the lift of the wind. There, in the righthand corner, behind the gust, beyond the fog, was a wall, an impenetrable wall of cliffs and precipices and bluffs. When I woke, mouth dry, the first thing I did was banish the thing to the living room. The painting screamed. The birds, vultures, yapped and grunted as the shadow-afflicted hiker walked in place on the path to the dark forest that lay, like an entrance mat, before the austere mountain beyond. Where was the restful silence I’d first envisioned? Gone. Now that the painting had made itself at home, had settled in, had entered my room, shared my night, oozed itself into my dreams, it showed its true colors. Eerie shifting sand, crippling cold, chain-like shadows, monstrous trees, scavenger birds waiting for you to trip, to fall, to fail. I almost threw it out. Instead, I pulled out the box of forgotten crayons and half-dried childhood paints. With a yellow crayon, I poked rays of sunlight through the fog until the trees found their shadows and the shifting ground hugged the grass and grew roots. The light thawed the trees until sap ran in rivulets, painting the branches, flicking blobs of leaves: green, yellow, and freckled olives. Flowers bloomed and the air tasted of lavender, of honey, of the blueberry-lemon-basil scones I baked for breakfast. The vultures shrank into starlings and murmured the blue sky. And the walker in the painting sat in the blooming field. Then lay in the speckled shade of the central tree. Content. Amy Marques Amy Marques has been known to call books friends and is on a first name basis with many fictional characters. She has been nominated for multiple awards and has visual art, poetry, and prose published in journals such as Streetcake Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Fictive Dream, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Gone Lawn. She is the editor and visual artist for the Duets anthology and has an erasure poetry book coming out in 2024 with Full Mood Publishing. More at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com. ** Morning Wakes to the Singing of Birds As golden daffodil row on row nods And the shadows do fall, drifting far away. As the sun of a new day leads the way Morning wakes to the singing of birds. All are dancing to these hymns now. Even as the snow is late in falling The seasons are changing and filled with hope. Don’t you know? Don’t you know there’s a glistening morning to come? Close and blink your eyes for a hushed moment. And you will feel its warm glow surround you. Like a winding crystal stream heading home. Oh, the morning wakes to the singing of birds. A mountain waterfall is always dreamy. Where the snow falls, it melts into the heather. Crying for springtime, let’s all sing together. All are dancing to these hymns now. Even as the skylarks are crying and weeping, The seasons are changing and filled with hope. Don’t you know? Mark Andrew Heathcote Mark Andrew Heathcote is an adult learning difficulties support worker. He has poems published in journals, magazines, and anthologies, online and in print. He resides in the UK and is from Manchester. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity andBack on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** Fifteen Ways Of Looking at a Scavenger (after Wallace Stevens) 1. When I was a child, my grandmother, (Eyes coldwater blue, yet kind) Warned me about the Blackbirds: “When you see them, run home!” “They never have a good intention.” 2. I wandered the field, looking for them, Wondering what magic they could conjure Could they really change a day, or Even fate my demise, as was rumoured? When I spied one, it was soaring solo 3. “Scavengers!” she hissed.”They work In packs, have lookouts, love my eggs Scare the chickens!” She had a little Fire left, still, reserved for grandpa and The Blackbirds. 4. I ventured further out and yet only The lone Blackbird hovered in the air Wings stretched, undaunted, confident In that animal way, dependent on instinct Distracted by a bee, I didn’t see him drop 5. Instead, I viewed his ascension, from the flat Ground we were both born to, no mountains To assist or impede our growth One hop, then straight up was the only choice. 6. I clearly saw the mouse in his beak, in Some otherworldly stage between life And whatever awaits us all, tail wagging Sadly, with regret, as I imagined regret then: 7. I could have kissed a pretty girl with black hair Like shiny wings, curved around an angel face Instead I asked about her brother, was he still Playing ball at Michigan State? She felled me in one swift cut, walking away. 8. I imagined the bird taking dinner home to his family That too was pure conjecture as he was out of sight Gone on an uplift, he didn’t foretell the death of my Grandpa, although the doctors had, years before Grandma blamed them anyway, and me by association She had spied me watching him, good eyes for 83 9. I grew up and moved away as we do, grandma Grew older and passed when she chose to, at Easter, when the family came to grieve the selling Of the farm no one wanted and my boy stayed Inside while I looked for heirs in the sky 10. I found them sweeping through the Golden Hour So many I lost count, so instead of counting I listened for the wings but didn’t have the capacity To hear what I wanted to hear, a rustle, even Though the very existence of scavengers Depends on silence 11. Rejection becomes something some men get used to Grandpa was decried for years yet retained his sense Of humor, but I wore it like a noose around my neck And she, the black-haired girl, left me again This time, leaving our boy, too, for a man in Wyoming 12. Grandma had advised me against the union, calling Her a “Gold digger,” but I went forward into the deep abyss Created by other leavings “Why leave him, though?” I mused, a redundant question. She had already told me, I was the better parent. Factually true, though I wanted her to be better. 13. I thought of all the times I saw only one blackbird And asked myself why, there had to be others., Judging by the amount of ruined eggs, peaches Felled to the ground with only stemmed leaves and a nearby Pit, harder than a rock, as leftovers 14. Judging also by grandma’s wrath, her insistence that These creatures would be the death of her Yet they lived, side by side, for eighty years, Trying to outsmart one another. 15. “The farm isn’t going to be ours anymore,” I explained to The sky, and, unaccountably, one black bird whooshed by At eye level, and I knew he was their sentry. “Go, tell the others” I said. Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass is a collage artist, poet, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared in journals and magazines including Punk Monk, Haiku Poetry, The Light Ekphrastic, The Ekphrastic Review, Three-Line Poetry, Natural Awakenings, Atlanta, among others. She was recently nominated to appear in the Best Small Fictions anthology by the editors of The Ekphrastic Review. ** The Thrashing Above My thoughts begun brewing, as did the storm up above. It did consider raining down, to mingle with my tears, soon. That greyscale landscape alive in my view as, at once, grey clouds became alive, toiling and twisting around. Stepping down as the reeds did sway around from the wind which whipped my face, and drove those clouds up above. Looking into the pond, there I saw his face, broken, tired, just waiting for the cold slap, and disappointed, I was not. He disintegrated into waves, left me to my own devices, as the fowl's flapping above drove the clouds ever around. Back up the rolling hill path, which twisted around grass like the grey mass overhead which writhed in my mind. Griffin Kennedy Griffin Kennedy is a writer residing in New York who has turned to poetry as an outlet for thoughts and emotions. They have previously been published in the Tones of Citrus literary magazine. ** Only your shadow for company on this road… birds and clouds gather. The Problem with Shadows When you live alone, your shadow soon becomes your companion. The world may scatter shadows all around you. The trunks of trees can mark the hours with shadows that sweep, but do not tick, sound no bells, no calls to prayer, no reminders to start dinner. Clouds can cast shadows like kisses, or make the day so dark that trees lose track of time. But your shadow stays near, knows what you doing, but never criticizes, follows you along an empty road without whimpering. Look! From here you can see again you and your shadow, the whirl of birds as you walk the road towards the shadows growing under clouds. But where were the two of you going, into town for beer, darts and conversation, or headed home for safety from cloud shadows and birds, for a bed and a blanket to pull over your head, tuck your shadow inside? Gary S. Rosin Gary S. Rosin is a Contributing Editor of MacQueen’s Quinterly. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press 2023), Concho River Review, contemporary haibun, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Senior Class: Poems on Aging (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024/2025), Texas Poetry Assignment, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. Two of his ekphrastic poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing 1990), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum 2008). His poems have nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and for Best of the Net. ** Cloud Shadows "Adult male King Eiders leave their mates partway through nesting and fly off to grow a new set of feathers." Cornell Lab, All About Birds Why didn't the birds fly south? Circling above a winter landscape, they resembled black-winged prayers for the sun to come out on a gloomy day. I might as well have been locked up in The Castle of Otranto trying to remember the minute details that a professor used as inspiration for his early novels class. As the son of the First Prime Minister of England Horace Walpole was no doubt spared death at the hand of his Gothic tyrant, Manfred, a character he'd created to dispel the image of saving the damsel in distress. I, of course wanted to be saved: Matilda stands at the parapet of the castle yearning for Theodore as Isabella informs her she is promised to Frederick. Overhead, in those unreachable heavens, the birds continue to circle. The snow has left a single path that winds down the hill like the rim-shadow of a lonely cloud transformed to the earthly shape of a black adder (Vipera berus) the only venomous snake native to Great Britain. Waiting for the still unravish'd bride of Theodore to take a walk in snow boots. I ask What is loneliness? And why? Can Matilda, like a love-starved artist explain to Isabella that she didn't help Manfred select the heavy metal helmet that falls from a suit of armor and crushes Isabella's husband? Will Isabella understand that Manfred didn't mean to stab Matilda, mistaking her for Isabella? On the darkened pathway that leads to the cemetery of dreams lines of poetry keep slipping into questions of fiction: Why should the Lordship of Otranto pass from the present family whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it? I hadn't gained that much weight, and some birds fly south in the summer looking for a mate: According to Yeats, Every discoloration of the stone, Every accidental crack and dent Seems a water-course or an avalanche, Or lofty slopes where it still snows -- as if the life of printmaking is in the lines coming down, sometimes, like icicles where we stand on a bridge connecting what the heart has never lost. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston. A graduate of The Creative Writing Program, University of Houston, in poetry, she studied The Castle of Otranto (the first Gothic novel) at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness" is a line from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn”; and the Yeats' quote in "Cloud Shadows" is from his "Lapis Lazuli." ** My Shadow Friend You and I monochrome color bleached out on the point of disappearing tall grasses chaotic flurry of questions wings Snow-packed path from a jagged past scattered in trees or to a forested future the horizon Architect of Poetic Landscapes you have drawn us birds images like the walls of Plato’s cave Clouds brewing another storm to shadow land hide the answers no matter how many times we ask Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg lives in Houston, Texas, after many years as a nomad in five countries across two continents. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of the Net, selected as a juried poet in the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times, and her poem, “The Art Asylum” is currently being set to music for the Chinese two-string bowed instrument known as the erhu by Singaporean composer Andrew Ng Ting Shan. ** The Van On a dove-gray today like today a van huffs into an empty lot. Children and their teacher stagger out the back. Birdsong flapping at its loudest cannot mask German shepherd bark. A child plays with a spin toy. A dog salivates, whether for the toy or the boy. Another child looks for a missing shoe in the charcoal snow. After a while, in this Polish grayness, soldiers steel-stuff the teacher and the children into the cargo hold. The ignition unleashes carbon monoxide, re-engineered into the space. Coughing. Silence. Birdsong. The dogs are satisfied. The smoke-gray clouds turn charcoal. Silver shadow casts on the spin toy in the snow. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Chicken Fat (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and Pounding Cobblestone (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her poetry has also appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Vine Leaves Literary, Tiferet, and other publications. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Her website is www.barbarakrasner.com. ** From the Cloud Shadows i Uller, winter-god, cloaked in cold walks in the desert of bare fields snow smooth under cloud shadows wandering alone along the road to dark cypresses forming a ridge like stakes placed in front of a fort of willow copse on the riverbank river water's frozen solid, pearly white, punctured by stray black rocks the only sound is the flaps and caws of the tireless, gyring black ravens Odin's eyes watching him from the sky ii Idun, bringer of spring, approaches with her steadfast walk, shoulders back, from the river swollen with melt water the soft song of season's warming sits on her fecund full red lips smiling as she passes over the land she welcomes the return of sunlight now the brown ground will brighten and green again with renewed growth the black birds call to each other even as they scout for sites to nest spring steps out from winter's shadows Note: In Norse mythology Odin is the god of death and war, Uller is the god of winter and Odin's rival, Idun is the goddess of Spring and the wife of Bragi, the god of poetry. Emily Tee Emily Tee is a poet living in the UK Midlands. She's had recent pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges, Genrepunk Magazine and Roots Zine with other work forthcoming elsewhere. ** In the Shadows The moonlight falling on the fields brought premature day to the world. The birds, caught in its gaze, swooped and cawed as if it was a summer’s afternoon. Was the man out very late or very early? He no longer knew. His pitch-black shadow - his only earthly companion - seemed glued to him, clinging at his bare ankles, tethering him to the ground. The birds would not take him. Not this time. He looked up into the dark-grey clouds etched on light-grey night, their shadows darkening the hedgerows, keeping the creatures hidden. Safe from the birds. Crows? Starlings? Their black bodies glinted in the moonrays as they twisted and turned in their dance, the murmuration forming itself as they gathered above him. Blanking out the light. His shadow was gone. Was he still here on the road? Was he in the clouds with the birds? He felt scratching across his feet, small sharp claws. Startled, he looked down. No feathers, no wings. He glimpsed a blur of fur and a whip of a tail. Too big for a mouse. Above him the birds dived. He scrambled for the hedgerow, disappearing into the undergrowth. The birds soared back to the skies, an eruption of feathers and beaks heading for the heavens. The moon reappeared briefly until the clouds moved and blocked its light again. At the edge of the field the shadowed man in the black coat was extinguished from view. The rats and the voles and the other night creatures held him down. They cloaked him and hid him and dissolved him into the shadows. He was theirs now. The birds won’t get him tonight. Caroline Mohan My name is Caroline Mohan. I am based in Ireland and write sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. ** Time to Fly Trees pressgang leaves to be more like wild geese. From the hem of the sky hangs late light from the back of the moon and from the thunderstorm moment from the air it holds comes clouds. Everything still floats. Smells from wet earth trail a path and a walker who’s clothed in a great coat while a skein of wild geese leaves no shadow. They lift and sweep to where they are called away from the cold silence of snow swallowing the music of this country vista to where a rush of crows caws at dawn until a puff of spring gaggles with them again. Time beats with the rhythm of the land. Donna Best Donna Best has published in anthologies, newspapers and journals in USA, UK, Philippines and Australia and broadcast on radio stations, awarded “firsts” for her poetry by an arts festival, as well as a state-wide ekphrasis challenge in Queensland, Australia. ** Runaway I accusatory poplar fingers point at wind-stirred birds that swirl above your head to call you back, cro-ack cro-ack your shadow too short on the bleached, iced lane eyes blinded with snow-freighted hedges ears ringing with the tinkle of icicle-clad forests left far behind… which the field? which the snow? II solitary traveller you are snow-swept wind-tears-wept forsaken in this alien landscape with only a murder of cold birds for sinister company… which the shadow? which the crow? Lizzie Ballagher Ballagher's work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in the UK, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. She enjoys experimenting with formal structures as well as free verse: is particularly interested in how a poem sounds when read aloud. ** Channeling Poe Standing frozen all alone, in a dream I saw her there, upon a tuft of silent snow, the beautiful Annabel fair. The sky was cast in clouds of gray. The circling birds were black as coal. Her eyes they tried to look away, each beast a story to be told. One by one they took their turn, plunged themselves into her heart. She knew the reason for their scorn. She must be punished for her part. The forest trees advanced as one. The timbered walls fenced in her fear. There’s no escape from what was done. The judgment in this case was clear. Her salty tears began to flow. The sober skies let loose their rain. The mighty winter winds did blow, the truth imbedded in her brain. In this dark and dreary place, where evil howls and calls her name, a prison stands encased in ice ... entombed she evermore remains. Kathleen Cali Chicago-born and Midwest raised, Kathleen currently resides at the Jersey Shore. Her poetic interests include formal and modern poetry as well as haiku. Always the student, she enjoys participating in poetry writing workshops and is involved with her local library. Her other interests include reading historical fiction and photography. Kathleen enjoyed a career as a senior auditor and educator and has served as an assistant professor of business following receipt of her MBA. Technical writing and editing were a major part of her profession; now she uses her writing skills to craft poetry. She was honoured to have her haiku published in her local community’s magazine. ** Wings Over Moosehead Midway up a frozen trail I pause, catch my breath, savor nature’s raw beauty-- a thin alabaster glaze encasing a naked stand of gray birch several yards in the distance, brown Maine fields beyond. The northern landscape, scarred by my footprints, hardly visible under scribbled clouds in a gray-blue sky. Overhead, an asylum of loons, their signature cries, carefree flight before they disappear in cumulus, before they sweep across the lake, a haunting call interrupting morning silence, a northeasterly wind scattering intimate phrases as I listen to each syllable of a lover’s whisper. Jim Brosnan A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019) copies are available opmewriter@gmail.com. His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways LiteraryMagazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word (Germany) and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He is a full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ** reveiled nothing I answer and reality trembles below the surface, waiting, unfound-- each minute is endless, contains centuries of forgetting-- thought grows wings-- a scavenger-- dark, ominous, hidden behind door after door-- even now I can hear voices, air whispering over stones skipping across streams that sing despite all attempts to silence infinity-- who will carry the music of the sky, the trees? who will teach this landscape how to fly? Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** Cloud Shadows I thought I understood geography, how to transcend its distance the shape of its unseen contours, the bend of my imagination. Knowing what it means to belong somewhere, without having a place to land. Elanur Eroglu Williams Elanur Eroglu Williams is a writer and teacher. She lives in New York City with her husband and her dog, Luna. In addition to her work as a teacher, she's an active volunteer in the reproductive health sector and enjoys writing poetry. ** drowning in grayscale undercurrents unbeknownst to me flowed beneath where I followed bold, opaque freshly-painted summers —a time when I didn’t know anything at all-- that eventually faded to highlighter marker consistency and I started to see the dark marks underneath. when you’re in the woods, you can’t see the whole picture, like snowmelt after winter, it’s a slow reveal. I took it as age, the stranglehold of adulthood, some coming-to-age ordeal. glass half full, glass half empty when spring came, I was parched, running on empty. sunrise and sunset kept printing, but eventually I ran out of coloured ink, requiring a reprint. the cone dystrophy of my mind only let me print grayscale —a colour ink production error, resolution unknown for such a massive scale -- these undercurrents, previously just footnotes rewrote the paragraphs I once spoke, and all I’m left with are smudged, questionable notes. as I became part of the picture, I gave up the role of photographer. mild dementia circled above, I barely recognized my own shadow, let alone knowing when I was underwater. going through the motions the road became narrower until it was a path trodden by my emotions. were those trees? I don’t recognize these deep-seated fears. or was I a tree and had wandered away? I drag roots, unpruned, behind me. is this a meandering river or a sky I see? I’ve lost perspective, I’m afraid. I drown when I breathe as I succumb to these undercurrents. I wonder do birds grow roots if they never fly again? Claudia Althoen Rooted in the vibrant cultures of Edmonton, AB, and Minneapolis, MN, Claudia Althoen finds solace and inspiration in the written word. For her, writing is not just a form of expression, but a way to navigate and understand the complexities of the world and the human experience. ** Spell for the Atmosphere For air is alive. For air is full of sprites. For air though black and white feeds leaves and leafless trees bears birds resting wings in trees and birds in flight. For clouds and birds are air’s scribes. Is air finite? It is as high and wide as the mansion of the bird’s mind; It is as wise as feathered folk fantasize. Cloud, sky, dark, light, let wing and wind feathers and flesh and feathery trees caressingly collide. Let mingle and mesh cloud shadows shadow sparrows crows and swallows kestrels and kites. Write your mouths in clouds-- air’s humming hives. Lucie Chou Lucie Chou is an ecopoet hiking and gardening in mainland China. An undergraduate English major, she has work published or forthcoming in Entropy, the Black Earth Institute Blog, Tiny Seed Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, Tofu Ink Arts, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Slant: A Journal of Poetry. A debut collection, Convivial Communiverse, came from Atmosphere Press. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 project, where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month. In spring 2024, she is doing exchange studies at UC Berkeley, where she explores the gay outdoors and works on a long poem that seeks to queer Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden. ** Gray Lane The crows speak to me. I am the only one who can hear their pleas. No one else listens but, me. They tell me of a man far away. Let’s call him Eversor. We don’t like him. So I walk down that old gray lane. I can taste ash and iron, and my motives become impaired. There used to be life here, but he took it so he could be more near and dear to the ones he calls lovers, in hills far away. In places dyed in deep color. I still remember when our own sky flashed hot magenta, on those evenings now impossible to engender. I see his mark all round, but I make not a sound. I clutch my forearm, while the crows beg me with their sounds. “Do what must be done,” they say. I see tents standing out of the gray. Wearing false colours, birthed in pits of man, made with idolatrous motivations of creating like the unmoved mover. I see Eversor dancing round and round. His feet breaking the ground. Plastics thrown around resting there on the ground. So I place colour on my underpainting. John Graessle John Graessle is a senior History major studying creative writing at Saint Francis University and is currently working on a variety of short fiction pieces. Apart from his fiction writing, he has submitted work to the Gunard B. Carlson writing contest, and received an Honorable Mention in the History category for the Examine Life Conference. He is also enrolled to study law at Pennsylvania State University. ** A Sleep Away I know this place, it’s over the hill and over the hill and over the hill, a crow flight from here or sometimes less. I remember it well in summer gold of wheat and poppy spangles, all over the hill, a king’s mantle, and I know it in spring green, as green was ever in the beginning and after the end, beneath red-flame fall and burning stubble. I know this place over the hill and over the hill, but it’s winter still and ever there, white etched black and grey. I know it will be there, If I just follow the birds. Jane Dougherty Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses. ** But Where Will I Hide? I will not murder those chickens and that makes my father mad. So, I shove my warmest clothes in my gym bag, head down the road, ready to make my own rules. I may even start being a vegetarian. I watch the dirty snow squelching under my boots with every step up our sledding hill. Will he know why I left home? I wonder if he’ll come looking for me. He may not even notice I’m gone, with the farm and the house and us kids and no one to help. This hill is easier to climb when I was dragging the sled and not my worries. I stop to catch my breath and turn. I want to look at the farm one last time when I see the cloud of black flying towards me. They will not hurt you, that was just an old movie. They’re just late going south for the winter. I remember that in the movie the people barricaded themselves in a house. If I run away, I have no house to hide in. I cover my head with my arms and run home, just in case the birds turn murderous. Samantha Gorman Samantha Gorman, a lifelong lover of books, lives in Western Pennsylvania. After taking several creative writing classes, she found her voice and had begun the adventure of becoming a writer. She writes poetry, short fiction, and is working on her first novel. ** Intaglio in a world made of paper her mother thinks in monochrome midnight ink spilling over her consuming her she dreams of swallows velvety wings spread wide in feathery softness dragging her into clouds the air is scratch-thin prickling skin with intaglio a rapid tattoo thrumming across a sharp tongue her daughter always needling each sentence clipped each word etched on frailty the metallic taste of friction Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places ofPoetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published soon. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** The Other Life How to live in a world that doesn’t sing with the infinite variety of colour, its depths, its subtle hues? Here we are, caught in this snow-filled black & white world, bound by the inky striations of hedges and trees, a place, where our own black shadow is no more than an exclamation mark in the void. Here we are, thrown like signposts onto the canvas of life to conjure up a future beyond these fences and borders – the almost tangible dream of another life all this, while walled in by lines and lies, winged omens gathering. Barbara Ponomareff Barbara Ponomareff is a retired child psychotherapist, writer and occasional painter and translator. Her poetry, memoirs and short stories have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies. She has published two novellas: AMinor Genre and In the Mind’s Eye and is very much drawn to ekphrastic writing. Barbara lives in southern Ontario within walking distance to Lake Ontario. ** A Study in Black and White Who knows where the path leads? In a world of black and white what chance to make subtle changes? Crows, rowdy, raucous, predators, seek prey in an unforgiving landscape. Trees, leafless, spiked. cruel, offer neither rest nor shelter, in a static, vertical cosmos. Where is man's space his shelter, his illusions? Reduced to an infinite smallness, only his shadow's behind him. Ahead only dark trees, nothing to comfort, appease. Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a teacher from Cambridge who has worked in India and Tanzania. Her work has been published in over twenty countries. ** Bird Shadows I'm being followed by bird shadows ten hundred flocks obscure the sun tremolo coo & hoot floating on the zephyr feather bone & beak slicing the firmament vainly they flee ten hundred fowlers I'm being followed by bird shadows no more no more A threnody to anthropogenic extinction here on Mother Earth due to hunting, loss of habitat & global warming: *Great auk (1844) *Labrador duck (1878) *Passenger pigeon (1900) *Heath hen (1932) *Carolina parakeet (1940) *Ivory-billed woodpecker (1944) *Imperil woodpecker (1956) *Arctic curlew (1980) *Bachman's warbler (1980) *Dusky seaside sparrow (1987) and the list goes on... *two thirds of North America's 604 bird species are currently at risk of extinction (Audubon Science 2023) Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith writes at times from an off-grid cabin in Canada where herons, geese, ducks, wood peckers, owls, chickadees, blue jays, finches, humming birds, and their ilk, grace her days. ** grey day… thoughts screech like covens of crows sky-shrieking as they circle cinder clouds their shifting silhouettes flailing and railing against this bitter breeze with its bluster of dead sycamore leaves littering fresh air before the bird-mob free-falls spinning in a feeding-frenzy onto stubbled beds where the crows will grub grasping this winter’s bleakness Dorothy Burrows Dorothy Burrows lives, writes and walks on the edge of The North Wessex Downs where she often encounters crows. Her poems and flash fiction have been published in various journals including The Ekphrastic Review. ** I Am Sanguine Despite these being sketchy times to exist, and yet the warp and weft of land, the unnoticed movement of growth is a constancy of comfort. A pause on a walk home in the loneness of landscape as all comes to pensive rest. The day’s work was not yet done but enough is done for now. Sometimes rest is the only answer. The heart in silence watches knowingly. The technicolour of day turns to silence come dusk, come starry night. Come, evening breeze, let’s walk on. A bracing spring around the edges a hunch-shouldered walk towards the warmth of hearth and home. The stillness of land anchors the swooping of bird nomads the terrestrial steadying the aerial, as a wild kite in strong hands. Good steady land. Good vertical grass, trees and two-leggeds, elements and forces and all upward rising things. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, artist and avid multi-potentialite based in Birmingham, UK. She's had work published in various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Unlost Journal, Harana Poetry, Visual Verse and Sunday Mornings at the River. You can usually find her writing in her local favourite café or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and on X (Twitter): @NusraNazir ** Upon Seeing the Glorious Crepuscular Rays If the end is coming, then I want to saddle up to cloud shadow scattering the etched air gazing upon a field and the pines. Cloud shadow milking the sky white. Wavelength weighing on landscape. They sunbeam overtly and pour into starkness. Cloud shadow folding like a German quilt, stitched brilliant. The grand artist wishing pleasant twilight. Gentleness comes. Whispering wind whirls. If the end is coming, then enchant the Earth until the finish line—a thin, yellow ribbon that unfurls. When the end arrives, no need to forward the mail. Let the narrow footpath weave like a ventricle from the heart to siphon into ground. Sky broken lyrics. Songs scratch the hills. If the dark birds keep circling, then eventually they will caw. They yearn from hunger. They eye creatures below, especially the lonely, lovely one. John Milkereit John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals such as The Comstock Review,Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. In December, Kelsay Books published his fourth collection of poems entitled, Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover. ** Seven Years When I was 7, I made a bird feeder out of peanut butter and a pinecone. I hung it on my swing set. When I was 14, I made a birdhouse with nails and wood from my dad’s garage. I hung it on our silver birch tree. When I was 21, I made a nest from cotton balls and torn-up notes. I hung it outside my dorm room window. When I was 28, I harvested organic bird seeds. I scattered them across my lawn. When I was 35, I bought a birdbath. I squared it in the middle of my yard. When I was 42, I woke early to hear the birds sing. I listened like a dog guarding a door. When I was 49, I cried for my birds to fly home. They never did. For they were already home in the sky. Michelle Hoover Michelle Hoover is an aspiring poet, graduate student, bad swimmer, exceptional procrastinator and word lover extraordinaire. Her work can be found on her phone, her friend’s phones, her family’s phones and now presumably on your phone. ** Finding What Speaks to Me I love literature, art, and music so much that I have a hard time choosing between what to buy, what to settle down with for two or three hours at a stretch. But this print obsessed me, partly because I found it tucked in a library book. Free! No name attached, and the book hadn’t been checked out since 1935. I didn’t really need to try to search out an owner. It was mine. “Isn’t it gorgeous?” I asked my roommate. “It’s pretty creepy to me,” she said, “looks like a great illustration for an Edgar Allan Poe story,” she said. (Appropriate since Poe’s dorm room was just a ten-minute walk from mine, though 144 years too late.) “You’ll see how I transform it,” I told her. I took it to a copy center. The art an unlikely choice for me. I don’t relish misty gray days with snow. I’m a Southerner after all. So I bought thirteen cheap black frames, made thirteen copies that I printed on a warm golden wheat background. Yes! Now they looked peaceful and meditative, like Chinese screens. I arranged them four across, three deep, to hang over my bed/reading space. The extra print was in homage to Poe. My roommate agreed the colour change helped. What we didn’t realize was that the birds, ravens to Poe, seagulls to me, would calm my dreams. No more yells for me to wake up from a nightmare. All these years later, they hang in my study, whispering ideas. Alarie Tennille Alarie Tennille graduated from the first coed class at the University of Virginia, where she earned her B.A. in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in feminism. Please visit her new website at https://www.alariepoet.com
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Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Horoscope of Prince Iskander, by the Royal Kitabkhana Workshop of Persia. Deadline is May 19, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. 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 artwork 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. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include HOROSCOPE CHALLENGE in the subject line. 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. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, May 10, 2024. 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. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. Insight As the clouds carry four angels, they hang low, dark, misty and yellow, The harsh cold tiles, hold Jesus's who bleeds from neck to waist, the ground also has a lady dressed in white, from neck to toe who appears to be praying, eyes fixed on the floor hands touching the opposite sides of her chest. An eerie sentiment by the clouds and mist that surround their moments together. Cold, hard, brown tiled floor also carries a vase shaped column that was used to chain Jesus up sits on the left hand side. I can't imagine what it feels like to be chained and whipped on the back, but I have pretty good insight as I used to be held and whipped on the arse and up and down the backs of my legs. I also had to be quiet and not move or it would be worse. Just as Jesus's lays head feet and knees touching the floor unable to relax. With his back arched I was unable to sit down and relax also, this depressing piece takes me way back to my stolen childhood. Lynn Reeves Lynn Reeves: "I am a mum, a poet, a writer, a artist and a Big Issue vendor I have been published in several anthologies and the Big Issue magazines, also Water Rat Publishing and Femasia Magazine. ** To Francisco Antonio Vallejo Regarding Christ After the Flagellation Though beaten down to crumpled twist angelic eyes all wish dismissed, you show Him not in throes of pain but in the peace -- not of disdain -- but of compassion even for tormentors flailing into gore the bloodied back on which would rest the sins forgiven as confessed by those who choose to live contrite, whose actions cloak in raiments white the faith of souls all others know is love He taught and said bestow as saving Grace of suffered days becoming Hope that He would raise. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. ** Re-born Making sense of a cruel world Life and death juxtaposed The torment of living As Christ’s flagellation With every torturer’s strike On his bloodied back The heavenly onlookers Imparted the knowledge Of compassion The tortured, the consciousness Of life’s eternal triumph Over death Z. T. Balian Multilingual French-Armenian author, Z. T. Balian, holds an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. After a career as a university lecturer, she now devotes her time to writing. Waiting for Morning Twilight (2023) is her first collection of haiku poetry in English and her 199 Haiku Poems in Western Armenian was published in 2022. Her poetry in English has previously appeared in Hope: An Anthology of Poetry (2020) and Setu Mag’s Poetry: Western Voices (since 2021). She is also the author of two novels –Three Kisses of the Cobra (2016) and Fallen Pine Cones (2023). ** The Fire that Breaks from Thee Then A halo of angels frames the bleeding Christ. Even in agony and torture the Light emanates from His blood-stained back. His folded arms predict the Cross that now awaits. The watchers' eyes are drawn to meet His sorrowful gaze, that all-encompassing Love. In the gathering gloom, that Light still shines even amid cruelty and hate, it illuminates the approaching dark. Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a teacher from Cambridge, UK who has long admired the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins. This painting is reminiscent of some of his poems on the suffering of Christ. ** The Invisible Hand Religious art can distance us from death, as even now as we mere bystanders are drawn, intoxicated by an aphrodisiac of blood. We could tell ourselves it was the painter's brush that opened and reopened scores of wounds with blood enough to fill a grail. The unseen soldiers' muscled strokes produced this icon of sheer torture, like a carcass in a butcher's shop that left the flesh in bloody ribbons, shed from back and legs, and buttocks, by long and braided leather thongs that are attached to iron balls and bones of slaughtered sheep, sharpened at the edges, barbed and hooked and closely knotted. And when inflicting pain became a chore that left the torturers so short of breath, they paused the arc of each full swing. Forty lashes counted, minus one -- the custom -- at a pillar like the one in Rome within Saint Praxedes, a shape artists in Mexico preferred Several childish cherubs witnessing -- a covered mouth, face hid, averted eyes -- will sing an oratorio of tears. But they should show terrifying wings and eyes of fire. We console ourselves with lamentations and mumble decades of a dirge-like rosary. But can we see in this scene every execution? The hands that snap the scourging whip are ours. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes taught the history of Christianity for almost forty years. The diverse ways the suffering and death of Christ has been depicted in art, poetry, and music have been part of his research and study. He lives now in the rural farmland of Ohio. ** Today, Prayer Is a Vast Country Today, I’m the child kneeling, arms crossed. Tomorrow, prayers zigzag. On the third day, baby teeth bitten into my back. My sorrow whips into a Roman tragedy: angel eyes hand-masked from bloody scars. scars to open, opening, wounded land, hunched-over. I’m praying that my witness won’t escape its remembrance. In tragedy, praying hopes to cover the sins. Pillars of prayer to hold onto. Someday, I will grow up, pendulum swinging pure innocence for these borders. Will the cherubs fly over? Sorry, I say to my prayer if I forget to pack you for travel. I cannot dress you in a white robe. Cherished, grey-winged, gardened, spirited, honeymooned, of all my coveted friends, only you, prayer, gaze upon this stoned floor to endure, only you can bite the apple. John Milkereit John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals such as The Comstock Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. In December, Kelsay Books published his fourth collection of poems entitled, Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover. ** On the Heels of Shadows Have we suffered enough yet to be saved? Is death not forever immanent? The silence is absolute, profound. Blood and bones carried on the wings of Crow. Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** Surrounded by Angels He was a very good husband and a very good father indeed. His relations with his wife were excellent. How did he now find himself here surrounded by angels? Hardworking, understanding and always fulfilled his marital duties. More than needed and in ways most people wouldn’t comprehend. How did he now find himself here surrounded by angels? He was a bit of a rebel as a child. His mother knew and understood. How did he now find himself here surrounded by angels? However, he did not get on well with the commanders and the rulers. He was a pain in their asses. He would open his mouth more than he should, and if he didn't stop it soon, he wouldn't like the development of the situation, they said. He didn't stop. How did he come to be here now immersed in a pool of blood surrounded by angels? It’s ok, Maria. I know you have already forgiven them, for you know that they don’t know what they are doing. And anyways, I no longer dwell here. Yours eternally, Jeez Zoe Kavaltzi Zoe started experimenting with writing in the last few years. She hasn’t had any of her works published until now, but she has completed two stories for children which she hopes to be issued eventually. She often expresses herself in her daily life through poems, short stories, aka microfiction, and pencil drawing and watercolours. She often visits the notebooks she has filled with them and wonders where that inspiration came from. She lives on the small island of Cyprus (South East in Mediterranean Sea). ** The Mystery of Cruelty Crumpled, he lies not far from the pillar Where he was chained, whipped and beaten until His spine became a long, flowing river of blood. His arms and legs have returned to the Safe shape where he lay in the warm waters Of his mother’s womb. Even now she has not Abandoned him. She kneels nearby, and both Have crossed their holy hands over their sacred hearts. Amid all this sorrow and pain, their eyes remain open, Though even the angels cover their faces in horror. This man and his mother can see that the cruelest animal On Earth is the Human Male, the thousands who have chosen The path of darkness and domination, wandering far From the light, from love and beauty, from sowing seeds. How easy it is for one of these to lure a pack of followers To wallow with him in the glory of war. This wounded one had twelve Dearest friends; one betrayed him and the others turned Their backs when he was helpless. The other animals have long known: Stay away from the Humans. Only the goats and the sheep, From the earliest days of creation, have lived among these evil creatures, Claiming the fleeting safety of protection from wolves, though They know that in time, the lambs will be slaughtered, burned and eaten. The angels, prophets and saints, along with women and men Of their own species, have called to these Humans over the centuries, To turn away from tools of war, from power-lust and lies, But they love blood and worship only themselves. As he rests, exhausted, knowing that more torture is to come, The bleeding man lies like a lamb, gathering light from the angels And the women, who will strengthen him to endure his death, Sing songs in his memory, and call on the artists in his name to lift up The light that evil can never extinguish. Rose Anna Higashi Rose Anna Higashi is a retired professor of English Literature, Japanese Literature, Poetry and Creative Writing who lives in Honolulu. Her poems have appeared recently in Poets online, The Ekphrastic Review, Agape, Americamedia.org and The Catholic Poetry Room, among other publications. Many of her lyric poems and haiku appear on her website, myteaplanner.com, which she co-wrote with her niece, Chef Kathleen Pedulla. Rose Anna and her husband Wayne are world travelers, and her monthly blog, Tea and Travels, appears on the myteaplanner.com website. ** Scourge Who will help the prisoner lying on the floor, lying there alone, unwashed and bleeding. No one came. They said he deserved the scourging, that it was their job to administer punishment and keep society safe, safe from such scourges. So no one came Only angels, those fat cherubs of empathy and kindness, they came down to help him. But only in his dream. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Man Was Made to Mourn* One man stripped flesh and humanity from another; some watchers pitied, others closed their eyes. Despite a petition by seventy corrections officers and one retired state supreme court justice, yesterday, Missouri executed a murderer-- we offered no mercy. Sometimes cruelty is nothing more than cruelty. When the dying hold your gaze and you turn away; who will bear witness? Lesley Rogers Hobbs *Title is from Robert Burns’ 1784 poem of the same name. Lesley Rogers Hobbs (she/her) is an Irish poet and artist living in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and dog. She loves popcorn, sunshine, Pink Floyd and the ocean. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Open Door Poetry, The Hyacinth Review, Querencia Press and Cirque. ** Christ After I wasn’t planning on dancing in the graveyard behind church but I will follow you Then, how am I supposed to know if you are tearing air open or apart with your fingers? Let me ask another way: Is this your first time? I made you promise to adorn me, as a saint or lover or corpse, with flowers like how insides petal out, raw & this is also called blooming and the water is warm until you are deep enough How we pause and whisper Sorry because it hurts like how we kneel and whisper Sorry because seraphs are watching You can stop dancing when the dried roses at the headstones are trampled enough go home, I said your plants are dying. Niko Malouf Niko is a college student and visual artist living and studying in Los Angeles. He loves poetry and tries his hand at it every once in a while, usually when nothing else feels right. ** Via Dolorosa In the narrative of passion you know there is going to be some hurting in the hurtling towards heartbreak, like an ostrich egg being cracked over the bald pink pate of a Roman senator, the cracking shell unleashing its gooey innards, treacly entrails spilling onto a starched toga or the petroleum blue hue of a sharkskin suit, but taking the shirt off your back and letting them whip you into a landscape of welts, well that takes the biscuit, not that you could straighten up and eat a biscuit with a back like that, although you might raise an eyebrow, or two, heavenwards and ask the old man, what have I done to deserve this, this frenzy of savagery, this hungry and heartless wrist flicking in a diabolic dance choreographed by the demented Marquis de… de de de de… when the tears have faltered from deluge to dribble, you might look around and think, why not, everybody’s at it on the Via Dolorosa, the scourge passing from hand to hand depending on whose harbouring the hardware and who has the moolah, members of the congregation and a rabid desire to wreak destruction on anyone seen as an enemy of all that you stand for, no standing room for them, they must be reduced to a crawling wretch, crying for their mummy or a twisted tummy waiting for a truckload of flour to feed their aching, you have a right to defend yourself when all the angels have fled, though these guys don’t seem in a hurry, maybe they bought the wings in that pop-up store in Tel Aviv where civilisation-saving superhero suits are selling like hot cakes, you can have your latke and eat it too, though too many crooks spoil the broth with their birch stirring bloodthirstiness and we all know where it’ll end up: yep, crucifixion, a fiction whose frictions have fostered more flagellations than a bordello in Bethlehem. Crawl away my friend and don’t look back, you know what’s coming. Simon Parker Simon Parker is a London based writer, performer and teacher. His work been published in The Ekphrastic Review, The Pomegranate London and has been performed at the Lyric Hammersmith Studio, Hackney Empire Studio, The Place, Somerset House, Half Moon Theatre, Southbank Centre, the Totally Thames Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Simon is an associate artist of Vocal Point Theatre, a theatre company dedicated to telling stories from those not often heard, and providing workshops for the marginalised. He runs creative writing and reading groups for the homeless, socially excluded and vulnerable. If you want to know more go to https://www.simonparkerwriter.com ** Door and Core It’s dislocated as a theme, in swollen yet skeletal form, the weight of bloat, smear splattered haunch, yet crushing bones in deformed warp. These finger thins with shin and toes and lie of head in disconnect, must lift that torso, being there, because it’s nowhere else to go. But workshop blue that takes the eye after slumped, raw, bloody dump; Vallejo known for pigment touch in contrast to the butcher’s slab. This Mexican, tail of baroque, has angel hands curled in surround from shock to heartfelt, piety, a cruel earth to sicken heav’n. But whiplash, beating at the heart of pulsing flow from cardiac; the scapegoat twisted, body shorn, all angular, contorted limbs. It’s thrill to inflict pain on weak, and turning cheek, pathetic feat; to glory, power, when facing meek, as pulverise offensive meat. But tender rise, his story claimed, then loud exclaimed as run and shout; less Friday known, no Easter day, and suffering, salvation’s door. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Incantation at Christ’s Flagellation Cherubs may weep at Christ’s flagellation bloodied wounds bear witness to interrogation his refusal to surrender to mortal temptation ceding betrayal of masked collaboration and what have we learned? Our own civilisation is marred by hatred and confrontation borders and walls pit nation on nation while leaders divide through segregation we scorn the desperate who seek immigration to flee from war and the threat of starvation what happens to migrants post-dislocation running from torture toward liberation? I pray that through talk and negotiation no more of the innocents will face annihilation yes I weep at the sight of Christ’s flagellation at the cherubs’ wings folded in meek adoration Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published soon. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. ** Our third annual ekphrastic marathon is coming this summer...click image above for details or to sign up. It's going to be epic!
TER editor Kate Copeland chose this artwork, and will choose what responses to publish. Thank you Kate! ** Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Cloud Shadows, by Katja Lang. Deadline is April 26, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. 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 artwork 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. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include LANG CHALLENGE in the subject line. 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. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, April 26, 2024. 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. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. We Float On Enigma Sky is no island paradise, no utopia. All measures are false, futile. The cosmos is forever retreating from our circumscribed senses. We wander and wander and wander yet remain exactly where we are. We are only temporary, an apparition, always in the process of unraveling. The sea calls us and we follow, enclosed in a mirage of substance. Our bodies seek their lost limbs, phantoms chasing bones of contention. To whom does this world belong? We rearrange it with make believe, unable to free the illusion of ourselves from its mirrors of Gordian knots. Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig lives in NYC where she spends her time among images and words. ** To Be or Not, a Complement? Regret masters Réne Magritte. analysis he would reject; the boy’s lost mother, suicide - Régina, queen, face-covered, drowned - all blamed each other’s escapades. To cap it all, she milliner, devoted as a Catholic, yet father anticlerical. For roses, thorns go hand in hand in wispy, wristy floral tryst. An egg, drawn bird with outstretched wings, to liquidate conventional; the mirror glass that sees behind, or handiwork for trellis growth - so many questions framed for us. His meet to marry, seven years, that butcher’s daughter at the fair, the girl Georgette his later muse, for first exhibits, critics rose, but piled abuse served, moved him on. The Rêverie, entitled dream, but did our Monsieur James think so? And would he care, or others dare? He did not look outside the box - denied the box was ever there. Through periods, and phases, styles, the occupation, war, mind more, those forgeries of headline names and currency in leaner years, but were notes printed cash for real? Try Ceci n’est pas, for a line, the pipe as concrete through the gap to what stand painted, poster pen, when artist seen and not the thing; surrealist in play along. His oeuvre, time and time again, by repetition, trauma marked, but each unique though looked the same for image seen not image been, a complement in every scene. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** When the Whole World Is Ruled by Love and the Marvelous I’m trying to write a poem about holding your hand, but your curved fingers pinch and caress the blooms on the bush. As if this is a dream of pale pink under an azure sky. I realize what’s left is my tongue like dough in the stove of your mouth. What’s left is to caress your tapered wrists, and thankfully, time is an endless symphony. Time to realize that our existence is adventurous, treading without bathing suits. Time for an April afternoon to throw bits of fortune cookies in the murky water. A timeless moment to toast marshmallow clouds above an infinite blanket. If only we could eat caviar and hard-boiled eggs from marbled bowls. If only we could watch our child chase a cat. You left me decades ago on the sofa, or rather I opened the front door and marched out. But this dream--joie de vivre—is why I want to write this poem. Caressing and closing distance. The folds of what’s left. We knife our initials in the wooden handrail of a bridge. I saw you drowning with roses cut in your hair and I woke to dive in, disembodied. John Milkereit John Milkereit lives his surreal life in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals such as The Comstock Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. In December, Kelsay Books published his fourth collection of poems entitled, Lost Sonnets for My Unvaccinated Lover. ** A New Pygmalion She remembers her hands tiny, milky, chubby like a newborn baby’s. For years they clenched shut, smooth without a crack, like dainty white eggs before hatching cherubim. Daily he came into the arboretum to offer her water infused with oneirogenic herbs he had grown in an earlier dream. He remembered lying flat and still in his bones, meditating on Primavera: bird’s eye primrose, purple anemone, poet’s narcissus, grape hyacinth, for-get-me-not, nemophila or baby’s blue eyes. His body rained and grew lush like northern California in early March, today a beige desert, tomorrow miles of superbloom humming with streamertails and swallowtails, painted ladies and honeybees. His hands and heart fluttered. Then Santa Ana blew his lavender ocean dry and he woke. Daily he fed her water infused with oneirogenic herbs. Santa Ana aged him into a dry ascetic sitting rooted in sand, meditating on his black shriveled hands. Are they burnt by some dark magic flame he wondered. In his dream oneirogenic herbs bloomed around a sacred spring. Saying prayers, he sprinkled its water on her root. His oasis hands blossomed into a ciborium. In his posthumous dream her buds are finally blossoming: a thousand hands like Buddha’s, each unfurling fingers in a different gesture, curling, reaching out, twirling round one another, milky and dewy, a blooming damsel’s, flesh-full but empty as a devotee’s heart to receive God’s spirit and body, uncrossed with lines, unholding sin. Graceful joints where her slender green stems sprout these voluptuous hands are white egrets’ heads spouting into grass-green beaks. Her floral formula has no sign for stamen or pistil. Meaning opens, suggestive. In his posthumous dream he sculpts his masterpiece of Arborescent Sign Language, slipping roses into all her hands, one rose for each. They are meticulously grown in a desert irrigated with virtual reality, dipped in liquid nitrogen, then warmed in his own cryogenic heart. The difficult thing is not to fill a hand or a heart he says. The difficult thing is to teach it to touch, to hold, so the roses, feeling tenderness, won’t wilt. The difficult thing is not to hybridize. The difficult thing is to graft eros, to heal the splice. For each sign to suckle its signified. Dreaming within a dream, she is signing with these roses to stay alive-- Lucie Chou Lucie Chou is an ecopoet hiking and gardening in mainland China. An undergraduate English major, she has work published or forthcoming in Entropy, the Black Earth Institute Blog, Tiny Seed Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, Tofu Ink Arts, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Slant: A Journal of Poetry. A debut collection, Convivial Communiverse, came from Atmosphere Press. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 project where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month. In spring 2024, she is doing exchange studies at UC Berkeley, where she explores the gay outdoors and works on a long poem that seeks to queer Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden. ** A Springtime Dribble Spring’s hands reach through the stems of pink rosebushes, conjuring blooms for passersby: fingers twist, pinch, and dig, setting a climber here and a creeper there, the changes changing every time a passerby comes close, stroking petals here, flicking bugs there, the curves of each rose’s face welcoming any touch. Cheryl Snell Cheryl Snell's books include several poetry collections and the novels of Bombay Trilogy. Her most recent writing appeared in 100 Word Story, Does It Have Pockets? Switch, and other journals. She has work in several anthologies including a Best of the Net, and been nominated nine times for the Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and BOTN anthologies. ** Your hands reach for roses they can not hold because roses are felt by the eyes not the hands Mr. James the pink flowers fall because your wrists are like stems afterall. Daniel W. Brown Daniel W. Brown is a retired Special Education teacher who began writing poetry as a senior. At 72 he published his first collection FAMILY PORTRAITS IN VERSE and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. Now a year later he faces a backlog of dozens of poems he’s compiling into various chapbooks to try to send into the world. He’s been published in various journals and anthologies and writes each day about music, art and whatever else catches his imagination. ** The Offering From the depth of her prickly nature the silent call: Take my beauty, take it, for it’s made for the taking. I have partied the pollinators until they slept in my softness after getting drunk on my juices. I felt the dearth of death when, petal by petal, my gorgeous flowers fell slowly, reluctantly, to the hardening earth. I felt my small bodies ripen with their seed, and I retired into myself, dreaming of the dawning of rebirth, of renewal. The cycle repeated--as it does--and I see you in need. Take my offer of perfection before it too will die, I have seen your longing. Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** The Reverie The rose garden is special to me. I dug the ground that winter when my insides churned and my mind left me for a while. I took the spade, cob-webbed and damp, from the depths of the shed. I pulled on my gardening boots and my hat. I walked to the middle of the lawn and dug. It was hard at first to cut through the grass, overgrown and brown. The spade was rusted and my arms were weak, grown unaccustomed to labour over the long weeks and months of last spring and summer and autumn when my thoughts kept me rooted to the house and turned me to the wall. My hands, pale and wretched from constant wringing, slipped on the handle at first but in time I cut the first sod. I turned it over revealing the rich dark clay clinging to the twisted white spaghetti that is the underbelly of turf. I breathed in the dank earth and plunged my spade in again. Day by day, spade by spade, I cut a square in my lawn. I watched it from the seat in the bay window of my bedroom. I saw the frost come, delicate icing that broke down the clumps. I heard the robin singing from the handle of my discarded spade and held my breath as he turned over leaves and dirt and pulled out pink, struggling worms. When the frost and the first of the snow passed I took out the wheelbarrow and dumped last year’s rotted horse manure onto the patch. I raked it across the stiff, chill earth. After the big snow that sat heavy in the grey sky for weeks and months and when if fell, blanketed the ground bringing the great silence, I walked out to the patch and took up my spade again. My hands had grown stronger in the pause. I turned over the sods again, mixing soil with manure and waking up the worms. When the weak spring sun turned to early summer rays and the ground warmed, I planted the roses. The pale yellow one for the solace of the quiet winter, the pink one for my skin with its blush returned by the space to heal and the blood-red one for my heart, still beating beneath the tissue-layers of resolving pain. Caroline Mohan Caroline Mohan is based in Ireland and writes sporadically, mostly stories with the occasional poem, and mostly in workshops. ** We are Seven Seven brides for seven brothers. Seven hands hold seven roses. Seven starlings rise from the bushes. Seven colours arc across the clouds. We sing... We sing our seven sorrows. Suffer our seven sins and ascend into seventh heaven. When our brothers were transformed into apples, falling with raindrops and bowler hats, sprouting wings and taking flight as swans, we were cast... We were cast into nettles, planted as brambles and briars in churchyards. Souls rise through our roots from the gravesides. Spirits swim in our sap. Green leaves grow... Green leaves grow from our skin. Bronze angels kneel on marble pillows to pray for us and play chess on tombstones by silver apple light. Seven years is a long time to weep... We weep for all we have lost. Each year, winter frost cracks our thorns. Greenfly crawl across our branches. Spring storms and floods batter us down. Pin cushions itch us with incubating wasps. Seven days of pins and needles. Seven seas of sleep and sleeplessness. Seven times seven we turn to the sunlight. We are seven, we insist... We pour hope into our petals. Plucking out our own hearts to hold up in our fingertips. Our wrists as thin as sponge sugar, as easily snapped. Bees visit our nectar scented centre. The buzzing fuzz of their bodies brushing our invisible faces, the warm sun-kissed skin of seven sisters. Seven magpies will never tell our secret. Saskia Ashby Saskia is in UK Greenwich meantime, soon to spring forward into British Summer Time. ** Flowers and Singing Whales Slaloming along coastlines. Growing into and from biomes of waters, greens, and voices. Of love, grooming, mating, losing, and dying. Like singing whales skirting the migratory lanes, day, or night, seeking partners, even for a few moments. Bliss of unions of flowers and hands, of bodies, and ancient Akashic wisdoms. Best held in the palms of their pods. Offering fragrances of completeness from one to another if chance portends. Hands not touching, just skimming skin. Fins not flapping, just slow dancing. No spotlights shone. Like whispers at night from afar. Like inaudible clicks, whistles, pulsed calls of whales that impregnate quiet missives in deep oceans. Messages that your polluted sounds muffle and drown. Traffic above and in oceans follows the same routes, blaring horns, chugging fumes, propellers chopping, engines sucking away possibilities. The sky is mostly blue, waters seem calm, and leaves seem at peace. But trails of strings from unheard whale music, from buds left closed, sometimes miss the mark. Turning into damp moans and lean, hungry fingers that cannot hold the flowers close enough. Can’t feel the aromas or auras. Lost desires. Lost cries for help. Lost freshness of the breaths of the dying young. Anita Nahal *Akashic record: Ancient records holding knowledge of all events, thoughts, words, and emotions. Scientific evidence has not revealed the actual existence of these records. Author’s Note: This poem is inspired both by Rene Magritte’s Rêverie de Monsieur James and the fact that the life giving and sustaining sounds and singing of whales is becoming dim for other whales to pick up due to high oceanic traffic. Anita Nahal, Ph.D., CDP, is a two-time Pushcart Prize-nominated Indian American author. She was a finalist for the Tagore literary prize 2023 for her fourth ekphrastic prose poetry collection, Kisses at the espresso bar (Kelsay, 2022). An academic and a writer, Anita has one novel, four poetry collections, one of flash fiction, four for children, and five edited anthologies published. Her third prose poetry collection, What’s wrong with us Kali women? (Kelsay, 2021) was nominated by Cyril Dabydeen as the best poetry book, 2021 for British Ars Notoria, and is mandatory reading in a multicultural society course at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Anita’s poetry is part of a recent anthology, Twenty Contemporary Indian English Poets released by India’s Academy of Letters-the Sahitya Akademi. Anita is the secretary of the Montgomery Chapter, Maryland Writers Association and former editor of the newsletter, Poetry Society of Virginia. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals in the US, UK, Asia, and Australia and anthologized in many collections, including The Polaris Trilogy, slated to be sent to the moon in the Space X launch. www.anitanahal.com ** Mr James Dreams / sometimes the breeze carried the scent of salt water from the lapping waves in through the window / she planted it in the garden and picked its blossoms / she was experimenting, she said, with a twinkle in her eye / blood speckles on the green foliage / I was tired from a heavy shift working on the new approach / they radiated their pungent aroma as the sun beams flooded my office / I asked her about it. She laughed lightly / I was deep in my research, developing new techniques / she put a bouquet of them into a vase every bit as refined as her cut-glass accent / it was hands-on research, really cutting edge / between the sun's warmth and the soporific floral scent I found myself drifting off / she said, hadn't I heard about nourishing shrubs with bonemeal / my work at the teaching hospital was so important to me / I was gifted a hybrid tea rose named Pink Lady by my wife Rosanna when I was promoted to consultant surgeon / the pinkish stems were swollen / small red droplets on the leaves like a spray pattern from a pin-prick, something I recognised from my work / I was pioneering a new approach / hands-on work, cutting edge / the pinkish stems were swollen / pinkish / the stems, the stems, the stems, the stems / Emily Tee Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction and particularly enjoys trying her hand at ekphrasis. She's had recent pieces published in Ekphrastic ReviewChallenges, Genrepunk Magazine, Roots Zine, Unlost Journal and elsewhere. She lives in the UK. ** A Longing Burgeons A remembering leaves her body and bustles around, tidying corners, making tea, playing the harmonium. A phantom self rises and dies unto itself when the reverie breaks. She sits at her spot on the bed and comes to terms with this all over again, every day. Broken shall remain broken. Outside, fuzzy buds make a late entry on the dry wisteria vine. You had inane thoughts of cutting it down. Yet, the longing to blossom coursed through its dry body like a mythical underground river. Even in the coldest months a dream burgeons in the rosebush. How do you name the feeling when the body knows it won’t make it back from a freeze, but keeps on longing? Sayantani Roy Sayantani Roy writes from the Seattle area and has placed work in Book of Matches, Gone Lawn, Heavy Feather Review, Panoplyzine, TIMBER, Wordgathering, and elsewhere. Find her on Instagram @sayan_tani_r. ** Bloomin' Last Saturday or so when out for a wee walk I thought of a rose a pink one I think but no shape or petal came to mind I found I couldn't picture how a rose should look Fearing I had that brain disease that one no one can spell I called the doctor and the doctor said come see me Tuesday Tuesday came and Tuesday went and I forgot to go Never you mind my sister said as she put my shoes away in the fridge So you failed that brain wave thingy Just you wait you're gonna ace your autopsy Donna-Lee Smith Donna-Lee Smith swears this wee ditty is mostly true: her sister forgot to go to her memory test her grannie put shoes in the fridge her aunt had early onset alzheimer's her brother is fighting the beast and taking drugs to keep the inevitable at bay her family's black humor includes acing an autopsy.... It's enough to make ya bloomin' larf ** Roses are Read Petals of white will bloom, celebrate sentiments, loved ones passed, melodious memories of lives they touched. Friendship reigns in yellow, fragrant, bright eyes like a smile of loyalty, glassy eyes of empathy hearing shared stories. Pink, the palest shade sweetheart of flowers, bud in brilliance, delicate bouquet caresses like a whispered sigh. Regale in roses red - favorite of lovers, symbol of treasured time, of hearts embraced sun-kissed, gentle touch. No matter the shade, all roses are read, hands entwined with recited worthy words, prolific petals of poem. Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson is hooked on Ekphrastic poetry, writing from art prompts, music and memories; her poems capture the visual. Dickson, a push cart nominee, guest editor for publications such as The Ekphrastic Review, Inwood Indiana and Lit Shark, past poetry board member, rescuer of feral cats, advocate for captive elephants often appears in journal and magazines such as Open Door, Blue Heron and The Ekphrastic Review. Author of several books of poetry and YA fiction, her works are available on Amazon. ** I, Rose I have thoughts— even though, it’s true, I have a pretty face. Because you have quick hands does not mean you may pluck me. Because you have artistic fingers, you think it’s your right to rearrange, to touch. But because I am softly scented does not mean you may come so close to breathe my sweetness, stroke my petals. Take your hands away! Let me grow, unpicked, to be the flower that I was made to be without your busyness. If not: I have thorns. Lizzie Ballagher Ballagher's work has appeared in print and online on both sides of the Atlantic. She lives in the UK, writing a blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/. She enjoys experimenting with formal structures as well as free verse: is particularly interested in how a poem sounds when read aloud. ** Our Minds Our minds, Made of a flowers such as tulips and roses and carnations, Is a collection of everyone we’ve ever known. My father gives my stepmother flowers every time he knows she has had a hard day. She does not talk about her hard days, but he is able to tell regardless. This gesture planted a seed in my head where my own flower may one day grow from. My friend brought me beautiful purple flowers from her house. She apologized for them being dried out, I thought they were exceptional. This flower, and my friend will live in my memory even after its petals and stem disintegrate. I like to bring flowers to my girlfriend at unexpected times, just so she can know how loved she is. Whenever I see grocery store flowers I will think of her. My friend’s favorite colour is purple. Everytime I see lavender, and the purple flowers that bloom in spring in between sidewalk cracks, I am reminded of my undying love for her. Our minds are a collection of everyone we have ever known, good and bad. They each come and plant their own garden in our minds. It is the most amazing thing when they stick around to tend to it. Sydney Rappaport Sydney Rappaport is passionate about writing, and is in eleventh grade in Charlottesville, Virginia. ** To Rene Magritte Regarding The Reverie of Mr. James The roses were to James your art and he the understanding heart of hands that had them each arrayed as if immortal, where displayed, your soul would linger daring eye and mind perplexed to wonder why a dream would force reality to scream that its banality indicts a world that underserves the values by which it preserves existence that remains ascent by many journeys briefly spent that rise to seek and reassure the truths by which it will endure. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent... of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise for words but from returning gaze far more aware of fortune art becomes to eyes that fathom heart. ** Flowers are Present Opal and a lionfish The peacocks feather Roses and camellias The purple heather Gifts of decoration colouring creation like cherries on a cake They are present They are Gems in kitchy colours luring us theatrically into sensing this place is magically prepared for us children of man kind offerings of beauty Stien Pijp Stien Pijp lives in the eastern part of the Netherlands amidst trees and heather. ** We Rose from Ashes I would never wilfully pluck the flower. I’d be happy if it turned its face toward me so I could entertain the possibility I am its sun. The sprouting of a love is so often an echo of the one before. Shared whispers in the sprawled night. An adventure that requires more daring than before. Rose and thorn co-exist. The curl of viridian leaf hides a sting. You would be stung trying not to be. Isn’t it just truth-blinding-symmetry? That heaven is made lovely by the presence of a hell. I, thorn, cannot help my nature. I am born to draw blood. As your test, I prick your conscience to see if you really mean your love. They say the pink rose divines the one who would befriend you first. And the heart would shyly blossom after that. Take my hand, it would say. Okay, you would say. Then not know how to go any further than that. Oh, the blushes. The to-and-fro thoughts. A slow waltz of back and forth. It could go on for years like this. Then one day, it warms up and…no more words are needed. White is only meant to be friend. Entertain nothing more. It would only dissipate like petals in a gale. Yellow is a dark one. For they secretly desire another while reading you their latest love poem. Naughty, roguish yellow. You are only stepping-stone for the one they’ve set their sights on. A beguiling downfall for many a fellow. You bask in their sun then wonder how the shadow of cloud had chilled you so quickly. Red is intensity brooding. Like a late summer storm brewing purpled clouds and damn, you’ll know it when they split. Eyes are involved. Air, electric with current. Suddenly, you want to taste everything. Passion like this must be tempered. It cannot burn for longer than a summer else it would make ashes of you. And still you walk willingly into its fire. Its velvet hug, a promise unfolding. To leave its centre marked forever. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, artist and avid multi-potentialite based in Birmingham, UK. She's had work published in various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Unlost Journal, Harana Poetry, Visual Verse and Sunday Mornings at the River. You can usually find her writing in her local favourite café or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and X (Twitter): @NusraNazir ** You're Here You’re here An angel materialized in front of my eyes Spring is just a vessel A moment in time It happens billions of time on Earth Trillions in the universe It’s a vessel for life to come anew To return Until it can’t Eventually it’ll end Eventually the birdsong will be gone Soon we’ll all be sitting in nothingness Well we’ll all be nothing I come and go To enchant To leave and let us die and live No To let you pick roses Hayden Rubinstein Hayden Rubinstein is a student who has a passion for the existential in our life but also baking and certain video games such as Heroes of the Storm and World of Warcraft. I hope you have a nice day reading. ** Haiku Triptych Magritte sets it – she fingers the soft rose petals – scent out of hand. Magritte shifts it – she fingers the shy smooth petals – sense out of hand. Magritte has it – she fingers the blooming petals – bliss out of hand. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas is writing poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems have been honoured by The Ekphrastic Review often. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni, 2021. ** Remember How easy it was then, to dream about roses, open and full blown, their soft-lipped petals whispering against our fingers as we plucked them from the thornless bush. Kisses without consequences, gifts simple as a cloudless sky, clean as morning. No warning, no horizon, no debt to be collected, no rent overdue. It was all we wanted, love without regret, no suffering, no punishment, no thorns to catch and tear and leave us bloody, our hands full of silk and scent, the subtle blushes of flowers just unfolded on the gentle air, a world tremulous and new, the dew still on it. But then too late, too soon, we failed, we lost, we found ourselves in other dreams, other gardens, cold and drab, all our rosy promise faded into pale dried ghosts, pressed petals, flat and tissue-thin, tearing at the slightest touch, scentless shadows of our earliest intentions, colourless as dust. Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic; The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, Inscribe, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible is now available from Kelsay books. ** Mourning Reverie the morning reverie a time between the darkness which at this early hour, quiet and serene, we chose to ignore i know the people on pavement by the tune of their soles it’s my favourite song not in altitudes quite high enough to reach the clouds so i call it the 6 am haze, and whatever the whimsical wonders upon us, let it last before the malevolence awakens, as we dare further into darkness i fight the tears to fall synchronously with our sun in mourning reverie Zoe Nikolopoulos Zoe Nikolopoulos: "I'm in 11th grade in High School and I've always loved to write, but it's harder for me than it should be since I can't properly understand what I'm even trying to say. I love to hear what people have to say just as much." ** The Paper Hanger Roses and vines creep in solid columns on my childhood bedroom walls. My grandfather in his overalls brushes the underside of the paper, matches the pattern as he and his ladder glide around the room. His hands hang this wallpaper my mother chose. But roses aren’t meant for children. Their thorns threaten just as Nazi occupation threatened my grandfather’s brothers and sisters in Europe. They are all gone now, blushes storm-tossed onto graveled paths.. With petaled hands they reach out to him. His scoring tool declares, “This is for you, Faygele,” and “This is for you, Isaac.” His tears salt the paste, the roses slide into his hands until they wither into negative space and die. If it were up to my grandfather, the wallpaper he would design would string memory stones on vines climbing to the sky. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner was only four when her grandfather died, but images of his papering her bedroom remain with her. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod International, Paterson Literary Review, Typehouse, Cimarron Review, Rust + Moth, and other journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. ** The Pruning of Roses My Grandmother had the most beautiful hands, slender fingers that tapered and twisted at wrists warm flesh encircling my own young skin still vulnerable to the nip of a frosted tongue. No one could prune a rose the way she could, her fingers and thumb welded to secateurs each cut angled on dead wood, a snip to outward facing buds changing the shape of growth. When necessary, crossed stems were sliced with words as sharp as a thorn on a thumb melding a wayward rose to her will forever teasing and guiding its destiny. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness has been published by Hedgehog Press and her next pamphlet Beyond the School Gate is due to be published soon. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet. Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Christ After the Flagellation, by Francisco Antonio Vallejo. Deadline is April 12, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. 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 artwork 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. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include VALLEJO CHALLENGE in the subject line. 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. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, April 12, 2024. 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. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. Dear Ekphrastic Poets/Writers and Readers, When I view this exquisite piece of art, I love the blurred colours and light. Having visited Paris only once, strolling along the Seine, Moulin Rouge, Notre Dame and other familiar places bring me back to Paris in my mind’s eye, wandering Musee D’Orsay and the Louvre, browsing the Shakespeare bookstore, and sipping wine under a canopy of an outdoor café. It pleases me to read the interpretations of each writer, experiencing this art in their own way, the descriptions, poetic alliteration, subtle rhyming, all congruent with my own time in Paris. The fog and gentle rain obscure both vision and memories. Words entice me like the aroma of crepes and fresh croissants along brick paths in early morning, when the pavements are drying and the street vendors are setting up. Although it was difficult to choose, I felt most drawn to the writing pieces that represented the feeling of the art, the blur of color and the history of the boulevard in the purist sense. Thanks to all who have submitted, and especially to Lorette for the opportunity to serve as a guest editor! Warm regards, Julie A. Dickson ** Amuse Bouche (ii) Montmartre steals me. On sight, on entry. Waves of déjà vu sweeping over. Or maybe it’s wishfulness. Busy artist hands circle the square, stealing the light before it falls. At the turn of night, the bustle becomes itself, excitement’s undercurrent happening somewhere, everywhere. Street musicians offer acoustics with finger-light effort. The waft of pancakes, crépe de chocolat. The benevolent lights. We went walking. Merged into it. Fancied ourselves French. I thought about Van Gogh, trying to join his peers, painting in the square. And yet, this was Toulouse-Lautrec’s domain. His theatre stage, neon-lit. A cabaret of flying skirts and abandon. Absinthe bars. La fée verte flitting down beside you, to woo you from your senses. The café’s ambience. Still breathing all the history in its walls. Of a time we have come to love. Frozen in paintings. Funny how you can be nostalgic for a time you never knew. How lights make the darkness inviting. How the promise of sex in the air answers the call of tourist’s unspoken wishes. Strangers know what strangers want. The mill of Moulin Rouge spins steady with the smell of money, beckons you in. Beautiful women sell the illusion, beautiful men. Diamanté glints, eyes and teeth. Glamour is a muse here, concentrated, never to be snuffed. At the turn of the night. Nina Nazir Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, artist and avid multi-potentialite based in Birmingham, UK. She's had work published in various journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Free Verse Revolution, Unlost Journal, Harana Poetry, Visual Verse and Sunday Mornings at the River. You can usually find her writing in her local favourite café or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir and X (Twitter): @NusraNazir ** Rainy City Just raindrops falling, falling into wetness making waterways of roads and streets and it’s such a pretty scene. I try to focus on it try to see the calming colours but the drizzly, misty rain is shrouding me in a fog of fear. I take the deep breaths I need to forestall the rising panic though it’s such a pretty scene with the raindrops falling like silvery teardrops from glassy eyes, teardrops which will run their course and splatter like rain then disappear into wetness and become invisible as if by magic. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud War Poetry for Today competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Consequence Magazine, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ *** Pissarro Pissarro’s time warp, braving juxtaposition, never forgetting. ** Paris Depiction: Paris. Once a lively city scene. Painter’s reminder. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published, The Importance of Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. Being Short, in 2019 and In A Flash in 2022. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** Architexture Passage The Hôtel Russie offered lift, a Grand framed window overview, above the throng, along, nightlong, here carriage queue for Moulin Rouge around the bend, so out of site. Observant programmed episodes, like Haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, a baker’s dozen plus, impressed, for cash required as principal - not portraits, Paris wealth elites. En plein air pain had brought inside, as pointillism set aside for full life, movement, shimmer sense, both aerial and linear, those nightlights under canopies. An architextured cityscape in urban oeuvre, boulevard, a bustle like blurred photographs of crowds beneath trees, beyond shops, where some suit selves for Mardi Gras. In light of change for tutored young, his Passage as Van Gogh, Cezanne, transitions, modern, pathways new - warm glow of gas, glass panes above yet stream of street, electric lights. Eccentric strikes, eclectic sprites play in the damp road mirrorwork; that downpour passed, as glower clouds, so were his final points, the stars of pure paint over layered oils? Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** Paris La Ville Lumière—City of Lights, of Dreams, Of Love: La Ville d’Amour. Whose night is day-- Whose stars are mirrored in the sky which streams Them back again: La Seine: the Milky Way. La Tour Eiffel, la Louvre, et Notre-Dame, A strand of diamonds strung along the quai Like Left Bank lovers hand in hand on prom- enade beside the Ile de la Cité. La Boulevard Montmartre, Claude Monet, Dumas et Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Et l’Opéra, Bizet et Massenet, Couture, Le Métro, et cafés plein aire. C’est magnifique, tres chic, La Ville Romance, Et par bon chance, la capitale de France. James A. Tweedie James A. Tweedie is a formal poet living in Long Beach, Washington, with four books of poetry published by Dunecrest Press. He is the winner of the 2021 Society of Classical Poets International Poetry Competition, a Laureate's Choice in the 2021 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, a First Prize winner in the 2022 100 Days of Dante Poetry Competition, and recipient of the quarterly prize for Best Poem by the Lyric. *** Walk Down This Boulevard And you will find that distances dim, friction fades and spaces shimmer under the soft glow of these ochre lamps. The crown of trees silhouette against a sapphire sky. The rustling rain winds syncopate with the whispered breaths of men in bowler hats and black coats seeking escape. The cobbled pathways glisten despite the rush of cold shadows, the crowd of sodden dreams. Here, silent stories shift shapes each night, as silken fountains of faith come awake. Here, the habit of hope is impossible to break. Preeth Ganapathy Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her recent works have been published in several magazines such as Star 82 Review, Panoply Zine, Visual Verse, Quill & Parchment, Shotglass journal, Sparks of Calliope, Tiger Moth Review, The Sunlight Press, Ink, Sweat & Tears and various other journals. Her microchaps, A Single Moment, and Purple, have been published by Origami Poems Project. ** Radiance Camille! Everyone should call you Uncle! You were a gift giver, a mentor, a lifter of hearts, Starting in your balmy childhood in St. Thomas. Born into brightness, surrounded by tall palms, Shifting shades in the warm, slow rivers, inching Toward the soft sea, women chatting on the shore, A parasol reflecting the sun’s eternal radiance, You saw everything and needed to paint each holy Moment-- shadows, colours, every one of them, And darkness, where every shade of green and brown, Red and blue still linger along with light, which Is never extinguished. You were the herald, crowning the peasants, The farmers and their humble homes with glory. Your jewels were the knots on trees, Clods of dirt, the ragged clothing of children And the drooping leaves of the olive trees in the Last silvery shades of dusk. Of course, you came to the City of Lights, And on the Boulevard Montmartre a Paris You still saw it all. In your old age, you painted this vibrant Street six times, looking down from a high hotel window When your eyes had started to fade. You still discerned The daylight, the boundless joy of Mardi Gras, cloudy Mornings, winter, spring and finally, night. Nine electric streetlights formed a line to the End of vision, and all along the way, light and Darkness danced in endless exuberance with the faint dots of stars. Rose Anna Higashi Rose Anna Higashi is a retired professor of English Literature, Japanese Literature, Poetry and Creative Writing. Her prose works include the novel, The Learning Wars, the poetry collection, Blue Wings, and the website, myteaplanner.com, which she co-wrote with her niece, chef Kathleen Pedulla. She writes a monthly blog, Tea and Travels, which appears on this website. Her poetry has appeared recently in poetsonline.org, The Ekphrastic Review, Americamedia.org, The Avocet and The Catholic Poetry Room. She was a finalist in the Filoli Haiku Contest. Rose Anna lives in Honolulu with her husband, Wayne Higashi. ** Nighttime Boulevard Light from lamps pool onto sidewalks, rushing into night's uneven surface like rainwater across glass. Elanur Eroglu Williams Elanur Eroglu Williams is a writer and teacher. She studied English & Creative Writing in Montreal and Children's Literature in Dublin. She worked as an elementary school teacher and now works as a Reading and Writing GED Teacher in the Bronx. She lives in New York City with her husband and her dog, Luna. ** The Lure of Pissarro Paint-soaked Boulevard Smeared with golden hues. To walk among the ghostly crowds. To splash in your puddles. To smell the freshness of a Parisian rain. I want To live among your brushstrokes Blending into the precise indistinctions Until I, too, disappear In the distance As the evening disappears into the darkness. Kimberly Beckham Kimberly Beckham: Wanderer, photographer, reader, writer, hopeful human with two older demanding cats and a love of breakfast cereal and Lego building. ** Reflections on Camille Pissarro's The Boulevard Montmartre at Night What is it Camille that allowed hotel windows to be your eyes to be our eyes rivulets from glass panes and eye pain were your inspiration paint strokes of blurred Montmartre created yellow light from streetlamps, shop windows and lines of coaches against the dark blue night the Boulevard's bustling crowd rendered more complete and of themselves than mere cohesion could design. Daniel W. Brown Daniel Brown has recently published at age 72 his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. He has most recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician and Chronogram Magazine and was included in Arts Mid-Hudson 2023 gallery presentation Poets Respond To Art in Poughkeepsie, NY. ** That was Then A rain of light, a jewel box, Paris nights on the grands boulevards were brilliant then. Roof slate, slick-glittered purple and midnight blue, and the hot gold of music poured from brasseries, peals of laughter, and the click-clack of hoofs, water-splashing. The echoes lingered long, so long I heard them before they faded. Les filles were the same, the paint, the pose, the clatter of plates, chink of glasses, and the brassy yellow light, smelling of choucroute and bright red lobster corpses. Waiters, white shirted, black tied and aproned, swooped like swallows, and in the dark all cars were Tractions. But the vibrant, multi-layered social architecture of the Impressionists, Piaf, Simenon, Jean Gabin and Zola was changing. In the streets behind the glitter, the girls waiting in dark doorways, cats at windows, washing hanging out to dry, music blaring, voices shouting in scènes de ménage, all were slowly being tidied away, pushed out beyond the périphérique into the soulless suburbs, so the rich of the world could have the playground of lights, the rain slicking off purple slate all to themselves. What was once a city of squalor and beauty, misery and merveilles, a noisy colourful cacophony of sounds and smells, of rain and refuse in streets where satin shoes and buttoned boots trod, where urchins followed red balloons, is now a cemetery inhabited by ghosts, as at home here as in Dubai, New York, London. They have it all now, squeezed of life and colour, cleansed of its ordinary people, workers, families, old folk with their chairs out on the pavements, babies in prams, dogs, street vendors and prostitutes. The argot of the titis parisiens has been replaced by sanitised interactions in the universal language of wealth, and the Paris of Maigret, Montand and Monet is dead. Jane Dougherty Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry, Ekphrastic Review and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses. ** Memories of a Forgotten Paris Bright lights shining with the colours of love and dreamers forgotten places long gone but still remain in the genetic memories of those that look for true love men still go under the warm glowing beams while the ins and outs of business create an ongoing hopeful cycle that will continue until love’s message is answered young Parisians utter real poor thoughts of love in the dark lights of golden hues houses stem from romantic ponds of falling rain real pouring thoughts of heartache love speaks nightly forever in the frozen image forgotten but with massive fondness gifted to us from paintings pointing towards the night with parties in the street beauty imprints onto my soul justifying greatness lots of jumbled colors and patterns provoke a sense of lost memories Heather Sarabia Heather Sarabia is a visual artist and long-time writer. She lives in Madison, WI and is on the autism spectrum. Despite being nonverbal, she is a prolific writer, typing out poetry and prose with assistance. Her writing centres on her lived experience and hope for justice. Through her work, she consistently strives to gain freedom from the systems of dependence that leave her feeling trapped. Her work has recently appeared in The Ekphrastic Review. ** The Boulevard Montmartre Is it rain or the jumble of tears that fill my eyes as I look down the boulevard? How bright the streetlamps are as they recede in not quite perfect order. How the buildings glow-- their dappled skirts reflected in the street. We walked here it seems only a minute (or a lifetime) ago. You left. Nothing was finished. I was unfinished. Now the night is both blurred and shining. The shops call to me in their amber voices-- Come, come. Carol Siemering Carol Siemering: "I have been writing poetry for all of my life which is getting ridiculously longer (I will be 81 this month!) I have been published in a a number of magazines and journals including the Blue Collar Review, Fish Drum Magazine, the Catholic Worker, the Bellowing Ark, Unlocking the Poem, and The Ekphrastic Review. ** A Love Letter to Montmartre in the Rain Oil colour-filled tubes bright with the promise of rich hues reflect the fragmented views of heavy graphite skies obscuring the light. The rain is a melody and each droplet is a note in the symphony of Parisian reality. A dance of light and shadows A melody of muted colors The city of lights, darkly beautiful now, lies waiting. Impressionist strokes blur the boundaries weaving reality through dreams as droplets dance on canvas skies. A painting emerges from the chaos of the storm. Nivedita Karthik Nivedita Karthik is a graduate in Immunology from the University of Oxford. She is an accomplished Bharatanatyam dancer and published poet. She also loves writing stories. Her poetry has appeared in Glomag, The Society of Classical Poets, The Epoch Times, The Poet anthologies, The Ekphrastic Review, Visual Verse, The Bamboo Hut, Eskimopie, The Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, and Trouvaille Review. Her microfiction has been published by The Potato Soup Literary Journal. She also regularly contributes to the open mics organized by Rattle Poetry. She currently resides in Gurgaon, India, and works as a senior associate editor. She has two published books, She: the reality of womanhood and The many moods of water. ** Urban Mirage Velvet darkness curtains the sky cafés and shops mere slashes of light reflecting pools of gold and liquid shadow onto the broad pavements which quiver and flow in the lamplight In street cafés anonymous figures crowd under striped canvas Dark trees, like feather dusters line the floating boulevard Thin straight trunks anchor the crowds which float past. A fragile world, brilliant, poetic seductive is held, suspended in the darkness which waits, possessive, hovering at the end of the street Sarah Das Gupta Sarah Das Gupta is a teacher from Cambridge; UK who has also lived in India and and Tanzania. Her work has been published in many magazines and in over 15 different countries. ** Parisian Lights Dance along that boulevard Those glowing streetlights Those cafe candle flickers Lure me back time and again Rose Menyon Heflin Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Madison, Wisconsin, although she was born and raised in rural, southern Kentucky. She has had over 200 poems published in outlets spanning five continents, and her poetry has won multiple awards. One of her poems was choreographed and performed by a dance troupe, and she had an ekphrastic creative nonfiction piece featured in the Chazen Museum of Art’s Companion Species exhibit. While primarily a poet, she has also published memoir and flash fiction pieces. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Salamander Ink Magazine, San Antonio Review, and Xinachtli Journal (Journal X). Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is The Reverie of Mr. James, by Rene Magritte. Deadline is March 29, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. 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 artwork 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. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include MAGRITTE CHALLENGE in the subject line. 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. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, March 29 2024. 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. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. Strange Comfort I have been leafing through a catalogue from the Musee d’Orsay while you sit reading near my bed. The book lies heavy on my outstretched lap, and I will need you or someone to take it from me when a nurse appears with my evening meds. Sadly I am no longer able to lift even the smallest brush to try and reproduce the golden bowl of Guillaumet’s sky, the grey, dun colour of the camel’s skeleton or the vast desolate Sahara. This painting somehow calls to me. I am surprised at the elegant way the bones of the camel’s long legs, once flesh and blood, are outstretched, not splayed. It is as if the animal felt death approaching and chose how to sink down onto the hot dry sand and accept its fate. The tiny caravan in the distance, on the horizon line, offers no solace, no story. “Sahara,” I say to you. “The title of this painting.” You lay aside your book and rise from your chair to stand by my bed, to see what I see in the painting. But your hand on my hand cannot hide your sadness, your dismay that this vision of death gives me comfort, something you can no longer offer, and I must forgive. Pamela Painter Pamela Painter is the award-winning author of five story collections, and her stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She has received three Pushcart Prizes and her work has been staged by Word Theatre in London, New York, and LA. Her story, “Doors,” is being made into a short film. ** Emptiness The emptiness of grief through the eyes of a girl who is dreadfully lonely inside her mind better hope for heartful grief when I can write these words and release the wretched soul seizing in the lonely desert My mind forms this scene to make sense of the swirls of tides pouring over my tired body Go to the place of loneliness and hold up the form give it peace real love and there be life and colour once again pour out my ungrateful yelling onto the world to let the good life fill the empty desert in my mind Heather Sarabia Heather Sarabia is a writer and visual artist living in Madison, WI, who is on the autism spectrum. Despite being nonverbal, she is a prolific writer, typing out poetry and prose with assistance. Her writing centers on her lived experience and hope for justice. Through her work, she consistently strives to gain freedom from the systems of dependence that leave her feeling trapped. ** A Postcard from the Museum Gift Shop You would talk about pigment sources, about brush manufacture, the relative value of this painting on this or that market. You know those things about art. How it is done. How much it costs. What is popular now, and what was popular in the 19th century. “This frame,” you’d say, stopping at a painting by a French artist. “Worth two grand alone, easy.” What would I say to you? Nothing. Or, I would say the painting isn’t about the camel. It’s about the desert. It’s about how a thing will die when there is nothing to sustain it. How a thing will die, and no other thing will come to pick clean its bones because nothing, not even a vulture, can live where there is nothing. I would look at you, if you were here in this gallery with me, surrounded by oil paints and canvas and gilt frames, with tears in my eyes, with more water in my eyes than in the whole Sahara, the whole painting of the dead camel, the desiccating camel from which all the material goods it was carrying have been stripped. “Maybe it was a wild camel,” you’d say, your tone bored, your words flat and uninterested. Humouring me. No wild camel would let itself be caught like that, at the forefront of a scene, already almost a part of the sand. It had to have been a domesticated camel. Not a wild thing. Soon it will be half-buried, angles softened by drift, and I feel the sting of the sand that will scour the bones, that will dry the rough-hair hide to cracked leather. There’s a postcard of that painting here in the museum gift shop. I imagine sending the dead camel in the Sahara through the U.S. mail. The mail sorters would spare barely a glance, or maybe one would snatch the dead camel from the sorting machine just for a moment, show it to a co-worker. “Weird thing to send someone,” one might say to the other. The postal carrier, the one who delivers your mail to the out-of-fashion brass box next to your front door, would look at it, I’m certain, and would read the note on the back. “Wish you were here.” Epiphany Ferrell Epiphany Ferrell lives on the edge of the Shawnee National Forest in Southern Illinois. Her stories appear in more than 80 journals and anthologies, including Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Best Microfiction, and The Disappointed Housewife. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, and a Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize recipient. ** You Never Made It To The Oasis You never made it to the oasis. It was there, but you didn't believe it. You didn't think you could have it all in one place: fresh water, cool shade from the sun, all the things you lack now. Instead, you carried all you thought you needed, but that's gone, too; it's just you, reduced to the colours around you. To the hot, dry air. To the hot, dry land. You can't live on these things, but they will live on you. The air will leech all the moisture from your skin, muscles, organs, and bones. The land will emulsify and reduce you to particles of itself. You thought the oasis was an illusion. But you are here in all that is disappearing. Rina Palumbo Rina Palumbo (she/her) is working on a novel and two nonfiction long-form writing projects alongside short fiction, creative nonfiction, and prose poetry. Her work appears in The Hopkins Review, Ghost Parachute, Milk Candy, Bending Genres, Anti-Heroin Chic, Identity Theory, Stonecoast Review, et al. You can find her work at https://rinapalumbowriter.com/ ** Concentrate Evaded A mirage - in the past preferred - romanticised, idealised, when Gustave, grand, but simple shows infinity in solitude. See on those waves, both beached, far reach - set crests, dips, statuesque through span - horizon hint of caravan, its passing, mirage as that past? Below mist mellow yellow sky, monotony, bleached bands of sand, old skeleton, cold, frozen tones, sole camel carcass in the waste. Alone, soul-search, did Guillaumet seek desolate to feel the real, as isolated wilderness revealed erased, evaded truth? Stretched parchment skin, yet sinew tent, parched bones to crumble into grains, for space, time aeons, concentrate, deserted places, Sahara. Stephen Kingsnorth Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com ** On Guillaumet’s Sahara The world must have begun like this. “Without form and void,” we are told. In the beginning, life was not just missing—it was rejected, as the camel is rejected: You do not belong here. The beauty of emptiness must remain uncorrupted. Any life here is ephemeral. The distant caravan passes through the landscape, does not dwell in it, cannot survive on it. The camel did not. Others, too, if they do not feel urgency, will lie rejected here. Not decaying, never decaying, for few microbes avail to consume and digest in this aridness. The camel will remain desiccated instead, a warning as Ozymandias was warned: Only distance is eternal, life is not. The world must have begun like this, with only dawn to remove the chill of night, only dusk to grant its restoration. Void, and without form. Ron Wetherington Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology living in Dallas, Texas. After more than half a century of university teaching and research, he has settled on replacing scientific journals with literary magazines as an outlet for his writing efforts. He has a novel, Kiva, and numerous short fiction pieces in this second career. He also enjoys writing creative non-fiction. Among his published pieces are three in this Review. ** Sahara Trade Route The caravan slowly travels south past the carcass of a camel lost on a previous journey, travels through the desert under 102 degree temperatures in search of the next oasis when a northeast wind horizontally obliterates their forward movement with sandstorm particles. In the early afternoon the vagabonds pitch tents, wait out intense midday heat before the herd continues a dangerous trek until well after dark when the Sahara turns cold. On this forty-second day of the trip they approach an oasis where lemon and fig trees flourish where nomads exchange salt for gold, copper, and animal hides. Jim Brosnan Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019). His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales,) Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word (Germany) and Voices of the Poppies (United Kingdom). He holds the rank of full professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. Jim has also won numerous awards from the National Federation of Poetry Societies. ** You Desert Someone once told me that water is friendly. Free Our patron saint This place is barren of that elixir Arid one says Did God punish you? Did you eat of the poisoned apple? Oh Wait, no apples here, did you eat the poison cactus fruit? Did you take God’s name in vain? Did you forget green Or never know? Oh wait, perhaps desert lives in the slow lane, morphing slowly, slowly, so slowly we cannot discern, except perhaps at night when the owl swoops You are home Animals crawl across your scaly self Hide from the sun, thick skinned Plants get tough Proud to be resilient, canny They make do Are they your friends? Or is it just the law of the jungle, I mean the desert Harsh world, harsh truths Preparing us for water wars, to catch our notice. It takes patience to watch a world slowly emaciate itself of water, thin skinned, short sighted. We humans plod on in our juicy bodies Lie all is well, it is not. Listen, it is slowly ebbing away, hear it Listen to the desert, it will tell you how to hide in plain sight How to hunker down in dryness, solitude. How to disappear when danger comes. Pay attention. Doris Brigitte Ash Doris Brigitte Ash: "I was born in Munich Germany in 1943 during World War II. My mother tells of bomb shelters with my baby carriage. We escaped to the country, suffered diphtheria in 1945, emigrated to the US in 1948 to Brooklyn, then to upstate New York. I went to Cornell and then to the University of California Berkeley, received a PhD, taught at UC Santa Cruz for 20 years, now retired. I have been a poet and artist most of my life, often combining them in ekphrastic poetry. I write very personal poems, as my history lives within me." ** The Horizon Walks Down an emptiness that gets emptier. I see pink magnolia in white grains of sand devoid of revolt. A mirage or a miracle, swarming quiet parsing the unknown into freedom of sorts. Abha Das Sarma An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press, Blue Heron Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru. ** Tough: A Sijo Sequence I. She died hard, and she died proud, with nary a complaint. Tough. Death’s freedom returned her to this Earth that she had worked tirelessly. Subtly stubborn and quiet, she would have wanted it this way. II. I, too, was - am - supposed to be strong. Steadfast. Unbreakable. Tough. My disapproved tears would have been met with a silent, shunning glare. She would have said to walk off my sobs and just get over it. III. We were never supposed to get lost - to survive a land this tough - to lose honest dreams to lying nightmares in this rotting abyss, goodness lost to this brimstone- and fireless hell we so wrongly chose. IV. She never got any credit. She simply soldiered on. Tough. Lacking the accolades of fine breeding, she went unrecognized, her courage, her strength, her hard work, and her kindness all unfeted. V. All our intergenerational traumas made us women tough. My own nightmares join the elite company of age old ones passed mother to daughter on repeat on ragged x-chromosomes. VI. We women die hard, and we die stubbornly, fighting and tough. Unrepentant for our sins, we become unwilling martyrs, surviving, thriving, and even tougher than we thought we were. Rose Menyon Heflin Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Madison, Wisconsin, although she was born and raised in rural, southern Kentucky. She has had over 200 poems published in outlets spanning five continents, and her poetry has won multiple awards. One of her poems was choreographed and performed by a dance troupe, and she had an ekphrastic creative nonfiction piece featured in the Chazen Museum of Art’s Companion Species exhibit. While primarily a poet, she has also published memoir and flash fiction pieces. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Salamander Ink Magazine, San Antonio Review, and Xinachtli Journal (Journal X). ** Desert Scene (High Desert, Palmdale California) Joshua trees have that power to be perceived as you need them to be perceived. Today as most days, they trod on dry ground -- grist scattered with brush; the mountains' stone temple in the distance. Gawkily, they stretch and stalk the high desert wind. Their bulge of leaves maintaining whatever moisture the night spawned. One tree lies fallen in the field, a carcass burdened with straw and crows on its back, struck by lightning or something else. We just stare and step away, following the others under a summer sun, heading toward the carved heights where cool water veils the rock; and dark pines like perfume burners honour the hawk, the hush of the living. Wendy Howe Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, diverse landscapes, women in conflict and ancient cultures. Over the years, she has been published in an assortment of journals both on-line and in print. Among them: Strange Horizons, Liminality, Coffin Bell, Eternal Haunted Summer , The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, Stirring A literary Collection, The Orchards Journal, The Copperfield Review and Sun Dial Magazine. Her most recent work has appeared in Indelible Magazine and Songs of Eretz. ** Seeing The Sahara by Gustave Guillaumet We saw it on our final trip to Paris, you at my side as I mansplained meaning. If you look hard enough, I said, it's clear it means that nothing really matters. The sun is indifferent, the desert is indifferent, and the bones that were a camel don't care. They spend their days dead, awaiting their erasure by sands of time. He’s painted the future of everything; listen to the silence you can almost hear… But you urged me to contemplate the light: cool yellow wide across limitless sky, borderless dusk that could just as well be dawn. I can see it now. Where the end was born. Paul McDonald Paul McDonald taught literature and creative writing at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, before taking early retirement in 2019. He is the author of 20 books to date, which includes fiction, poetry and scholarship. His most recent poetry collection is 60 Poems (Greenwich Exchange Press, 2023). ** Sahara Wadi O, wind in the dunes old wells, the aquifers mud houses “Kel Tagelmust,” the veiled people Sahrawi, Berber for desert along the river bed date trees, olive trees, figs humped camels, the zebu the wattle trees used for fodder and firewood sheep and the goats. O, everything flattens a field of bitter apple reed grass locust swarms. Ilona Martonfi Ilona Martonfi is a mother, an activist, an educator, literary curator, poet and an editor. Born in Budapest, Hungary, she has also lived in Austria and Germany. Martonfi writes in seven chapbooks, journals across North America and abroad. Recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2010 Community Award. Martonfi lives in Montreal, Canada. The Tempest, Inanna Publications, 2022, is her fifth poetry book. ** I Can’t Blame You There was no reason for you to stay. I was already gone, lost in the great Sahara of my heart. Acres of sand repeating the same denial, grain by grain, from here to the world’s blunt end, a place without mercy, that teases the eyes with visions of golden domes and towers rising into the blind white sky. Where the sun’s an anvil, each day hammered flat as sheets of metal too hot to touch, where no bird flies and no green seed dares unfold on the incinerating air. You did not see me there, bleak as the line of the horizon dividing burning sand from burning sky. You could not see through my eyes-still there but fading fast into the once green world, gone flat as a cardboard sign advertising hopes I can’t believe in. Here where my heart is a desert no one can cross, where even camels collapse like empty sacks, nothing more than leather and bones, a warning only the desperate can ignore. In this great nothing you will never enter with voice or hand or eye, where I’ve gone too far to catch, where the wind shifts sand to fill my footprints, erasing my faintest trace too fast for anyone to follow. Where no one will find me. Where I too am nothing, leather and bones, drying in the sun. Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, Inscribe, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible is now available from Kelsay books. ** Deserted 1 Does the sky rise to meet us? It scatters our questions into lamentations of unshed tears. It seeps into our blood roots growing like branches between our bones. 2 The barren land holds onto our days. We keep knocking on its door but the only answer is dust. The dust turns us into ghosts. We try to find the one that is Death-- to claim it, clarify it, give it meaning. 3 Lost ground settles on the horizon. It exposes all we wish to be but are not, all that leaves us stranded, isolated, alone. Without a deity, what defines us? Belief comes and goes like anger, like despair, like all those tiny glimmers of hope. Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/. ** Deserted The new guy, most had called him, not bothering to learn the names that changed like a long-running show with an ever-changing cast and crew. At some point, someone noticed he was missing, a break in the chorus line, easily replaced. He lay there, not feeling the hot sand anymore--bleeding, blending, becoming a part of the desert. Downed by a scorpion, was it? He couldn’t remember anymore. He was floating on waterless waves in the sea of time. Drifting as night devoured the day. Were his eyes open? He was certain he saw the lights of the city, a radiant dance across the distant expanse of arid dunes. They murmur to him with the voices of forgotten loves, “come!” Stars glow in the eyes of the fennec fox. He yelps in excitement to his burrow mates, calling each by name. Merril D. Smith Merril D. Smith lives in southern New Jersey. Her poetry has been published in Black Bough Poetry, Acropolis, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Storms, Fevers of the Mind, Humana Obscura, and Sidhe Press, among other places. Her full-length collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was a Black Bough Press featured book. ** The Sahara, Gustave Guillaumet (1867) A skeleton is all a rotting camel leaves, just as the blazing sunlight sets -- without a trace of preying birds or mammals -- its death was due, perhaps, to unpaid debts in drifts of sand no human feet now trammel. Orientalists created fictions of the desert, luring and exotic, whose sand contained some secretive encryptions, as dreams made tantalizingly erotic. embraced by ancient Romans, Greeks, Egyptians. The desert is where we meet God alone -- the flat Sahara filled with nothingness -- while the wind like us prolongs a moan. Far back, across this treeless wilderness a caravan heads off to the unknown. It moves between two worlds in blinding gusts, across terrain that hides our history -- buried implements of war now left to rust, as the sky reveals its mystery: the arc of stars whose dust became our dust. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a retired educator who remembers various visits to the deserts in New Mexico, Texas, and the Negev. His poems have appeared in: The Ekphrastic Review, Ekstasis Poetry, Chained Muse, Snakeskin Poetry, The Montreal Review, and elsewhere. ** And You Knew Me I put city life behind me, turn my back on spires and “turf” lines. I follow my gut, those pressing urges whose origin grows from unformed substance. I never look up. I never look back. I set my face like flint and strike my own path in the desert. I know the names of every tumbleweed, every burnt stalk, every sunless shadow. I can lie down now, dream of what’s dew. mid-day shimmers in waves of shady green floating . . . floating Todd Sukany Todd Sukany <tasukany@gmail.com>, a Pushcart nominee, lives in Pleasant Hope, Missouri, with his wife of over forty years. His work appears in Ancient Paths, Cantos: A Literary and Arts Journal, Cave Region Review, The Christian Century, Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review. He and Raymond Kirk have co-authored books of poetry, Book of Mirrors (1st through 5th). Sukany’s latest book, Frisco Trail and Tales, chronicles a decade of running experiences. A native of Michigan, Sukany stays busy running, playing guitar, doting on six grandchildren, and caring for three rescued dogs and four rescued cats. ** visiting an exhibition in the rain rainbow hues of parked cars do not relieve the grey infusion of constant drizzle even museum corridors have absorbed the mood captured by the artist what pigment is this a muddle of avocado and coffee colors the stark Saharan landscape the desert brushed in varying tones stretches to an indeterminant sky where even the sun is muted with dust should I pity the mummified camel reduced to leather and bones neck stretched out as though reaching for one more step one more galactic spectacle of moon and stars was it the icy night that felled him or the nearness of stars that rendered him breathless outside dusk had chased the rain perhaps the night sky would blaze with that starlit brilliance Kat Dunlap Kat Dunlap grew up Norristown, PA and now resides in Massachusetts where she is a member of the Tidepool Poets of Plymouth. She received a BA in English from Arcadia University and holds an MFA from Pacific University. She edited two college writing publications as well as the Tidepool Poets Annual. For many years she was Director of the National Writing Project site at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and is currently the co-owner of Writers Ink of MA. Her chapbook The Blue Bicycle is being prepared for a spring launch. ** New Ekphrastic Contest!!!!Pick up our ebook of 50 pink prompts to inspire your ekphrastic practice.
You can enter up to eight of your pink-themed poems or stories into our contest, too. Click here for contest info: https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/ekphrastic-contest-announcement-tickled-pink?fbclid=IwAR1JelpV9gFQ43MJOPbpQDDsZ0avm8b8XhTkc0kNfPhtRvmFSLVZbI1_zBc Welcome lovers of art and ekphrastic writing and please enjoy Boulevard Montmartre by Camille Pissarro. According to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Pissarro "acted as a father figure not only to the Impressionists but to all four of the major Post-Impressionists, including Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. I am intrigued with this particular time period of art, and am a fan of these artists. It was interesting to read of his influence on impressionists and post- impressionists. I look forward to your poetry and flash fiction using this exquisite piece of art as a prompt. Thank you to Lorette Luzajic for allowing me to serve as a guest editor for this ekphrastic challenge! Warm Regards, Julie A. Dickson ** Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Boulevard Montmartre, by Camille Pissarro. Deadline is March 15, 2024. You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. 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 artwork 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. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Thank you. A voluntary gift does not affect the selection process in any way. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include PISSARRO CHALLENGE in the subject line. 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. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight EST, March 15, 2024. 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. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we do not send out sorry notices or yes letters for challenge submissions. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 15. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! 16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly. |
Challenges
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