Ekphrasis

July 26, 2018

“Love Poem to My Wife, with Pigeons” by James ValvisPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2018: Editor’s Choice

 

The Sound of Wings by Gretchen Rockwell

Image: “The Sound of Wings” by Gretchen Rockwell. “Love Poem to My Wife, with Pigeons” was written by James Valvis for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2018, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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James Valvis

LOVE POEM TO MY WIFE, WITH PIGEONS

for K

In those days I visited a local park,
hoping something would happen. Life
perhaps, or a check in the mailbox

so I could leave the apartment where
I was not living, lights turned off,
only water brown in its unflushed toilet.

This, I knew, was the life of an animal.
A bird, perhaps, a pigeon, gray and ugly,
waiting for crumbs to be tossed away.

A cold, damp bench was my favorite
like a drunk has a favorite barstool.
At first the pigeons gathered around,

waiting, wanting what I could not give,
but as soon as they realized I had nothing
they accepted me as one of their own.

All day we sat in our stale seconds,
our connection made possible mostly
by our lack of will to do anything else.

The silver winter sun was a dime
flipped in the air by some bored god,
and puddles lay about like mirrors

thrown into the gutter. City trees,
bearded with frost, bent forward like
beggars begging passersby for warmth.

But the pigeons, huddled together,
sat stoically, as if inside them beat
small hearts like white dwarf stars.

Daily no check came, and few crumbs.
What did come were joggers and taxi cabs
that sent pigeons scrambling a few feet.

What surprises us, in the end, is action,
will enough to shuffle and endure, when
there is no other ambition within you.

I too felt this odd urge to continue on,
to scurry just enough out of the way
of tragedy, to escape the tires of bikes,

stones thrown by kids, bolts of grief,
to survive long enough to make it here
to your luxurious embrace, my love.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
June 2018, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “In a particularly strong month of entries, ‘Love Poem to My Wife, with Pigeons’ stood out for the authenticity of its voice. Sometimes it feels like all we want from a poem is one damn honest moment for a change, and this plainspoken narrative sings true. The length of its arc is perfect, too—just long enough to forget, by the end, that it was always a love story.”

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July 19, 2018

“The Shape of Your Elbow” by Jack McGavickPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2018: Artist’s Choice

 

The Sound of Wings by Gretchen Rockwell

Image: “The Sound of Wings” by Gretchen Rockwell. “The Shape of Your Elbow” was written by Jack McGavick for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2018, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Jack McGavick

THE SHAPE OF YOUR ELBOW

all roads lead here so it’s no surprise
under a hot sun the wad of gum
on the cobblestone rebecomes its chewy self
everything’s milling the everything grist
of the big city so dark so inky on the map
how could you have missed its eddying current
above the sucking of the drain just days ago
I stood with the dish soap in one hand
scrub brush in the other when it happened
just like that—pigeons bloom
newly unique from their milling
like the flock of bubbles caught
for a second in my kitchen window
before I flung myself car-first
down the interstate to see you
apparently in a park
surrounded by pigeons in bloom
the metaphor long pollinated
some pigeon kits survive the shift
withstand that sudden jostle
and some can’t bear the pull
of all that impossible space
the new shafts of light on the cobblestones
every time I blink I’m sure you’re gone

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
June 2018, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Gretchen Rockwell: “What a difficult choice to make! I had a hard time with the decision, but ultimately I’ve decided to select ‘The Shape of Your Elbow’ as my author’s pick. I love the striking and vivid imagery and the poet’s use of noun- and verb-play in this poem, from pigeons blooming to that beautiful line about’everything’s milling the everything grist.’ Something about the visceral detail and sound of this poem hooked me—by the time I reached the final line, I too was searching for what I feared to be obscured, lost.”

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June 28, 2018

“Dispatch from an Inland University” by Jen Jabaily-BlackburnPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2018: Editor’s Choice

 

Message in a Bottle by Jen Ninnis

Image: “Message in a Bottle” by Jen Ninnis. “Dispatch from an Inland University” was written by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2018, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

DISPATCH FROM AN INLAND UNIVERSITY

First thing they do:
they rust
the bright out of you.

Your uniform almost
a tourist’s,
color-corrected

to minimize joy.
You’re rewired, and then
to imagine

you don’t know it,
you dirty bomb, you,
excites them.

A hand raised up
to the ear
mimics boredom.

They are so pleased
to be launched
ahead like this,

so delighted to play
sailor, to lay
groundwork. So charmed

to be met, to get to speak
and speak and wait
for no reply.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2018, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I fell in love with this poem after reading just the first three lines—the enjambment, the image, the rhythm, the rhyme. A poem doesn’t have to be quotable to be great, but what a great quote! And then I also loved the way the poem doubles-down on the painting’s despair—even a hopeless message in a bottle is a fantasy so far from the sea. The rest of the poem is intimately ambiguous in its self-dialogue, and feels like a real window into the speaker’s thoughts. Is the mood a over-indulgent melodrama, comically self-aware, or is it expressing a genuine melancholy? Either way, the poem reminds me of times when it’s all of that at once, before closing with another great stanza that lives up to the promise of the first.”

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June 21, 2018

“Starfish” by Michael StrandPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2018: Artist’s Choice

 

Message in a Bottle by Jen Ninnis

Image: “Message in a Bottle” by Jen Ninnis. “Starfish” was written by Michael Strand for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2018, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Michael Strand

STARFISH

You sit alone as a painted asteroid, folded.
Your name sounds like one, both floating
in from the unknown.

Sidelong asteroidea,

do you carry a fresh message
about love or conquest, one we have not heard
before, perhaps the secret lyrics to a song
that solves low tides

and war when sung?

Is the secret paper folded into your long limbs,
your skull-shorn head, bare
as having returned from the great war
between cockle and nautili?

Do you cup a past of seawind
encased in glass, floating
the sun-dried future into shore
like a fragile mandala

of many-colored sands?

Retelling our histories
that sometimes took place, or didn’t.
Was it a red tide of blood waves,
ocean stars falling and left out to rot

like so many corpses?

After the battle the world denied existing,
did you cradle the survivors
in your pentapod, your astral gaze,
your face-cradled palm?

Were they like abandoned children
in need of cradling—
your painted cheek, your sidelong star?

A grande odalisque

in the reverie of their adoration,
were you tragic?
Did they know you are toxic
to those who try to catch you, eat you,

but grow stronger every night
submerged? Do they know we see
our reflections in your body,

that you do not need us
to create, as we do you?

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2018, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Jen Ninnis: “The depth of this poem touched me in ways not easily explained. Both the poem and my painting have mystery. Who is this colorfully dressed and face-painted person on the beach and what is the message in the bottle? Is she sending or receiving it? I love the questions the poem asks, how we each have multifaceted history, stories, memories, and how these are not always knowable, explainable or revealed, but nonetheless shape us. The reference to hoping for solutions to wars and violence and the consequences of not finding solutions—if my painting was a starting off place for the poet to have these thoughts, that is remarkable. The poem has a quality of unknowingness; perhaps it is this unknowingness that sparks creativity. I love the line, ‘Did they know you are toxic to those who try to catch you, eat you, but grow stronger every night submerged?’ Perhaps grasping to know is what’s ‘toxic’ and shouldn’t be a goal, but questions and the search is what opens the mind to almost anything. The line, ‘abandoned children in need of cradling,’ in light of current events, made me think about the horror of our government’s decision to separate children from their parents at the border. I don’t know if the poet was thinking about this while writing it but it has resonance today, sadly. It is very gratifying to think my painting somehow evoked these thoughts and themes All of the poems were wonderful to read; it was difficult to choose just one. Poetry and visual art complement each other in endless ways and I’m thankful my painting was one of those chosen to be part of the Ekphrastic Challenge.”

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May 31, 2018

“Your Favorite Writer Is Not Your Mother” by Jill M. TalbotPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2018: Editor’s Choice

 

Through the Looking Glass by Melody Carr

Image: “Through the Looking Glass” by Melody Carr. “Your Favorite Writer Is Not Your Mother” was written by Jill M. Talbot for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2018, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Jill M. Talbot

YOUR FAVORITE WRITER IS NOT YOUR MOTHER

All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land.
—Janet Frame

Just because she looks
Like you, or looks like
Your mother, that does
Not make your favorite
Writer your mother. Just
Because she slept with
Bones, was misdiagnosed
With the same lucid
Dreams, or swallowed
The same blue pills.
Just because she lived
In little houses or had
Siblings die young, or
Finds odd things funny.
Just because she had
Unbearable hair and teeth.
Just because you planted
A turtle under a rock.
Just because there’s a photo
Of a hospital, of weeds
Growing out of eyes.
Just because you don’t have
A better half. Just because
You’re a quarter the way
Home. None of this
Makes your favorite writer
Your mother.
Just ask her.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2018, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Out of over 300 poems submitted to April’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Jill Talbot leaped the farthest from the literal. Propelled along by a strong rhythm, it’s a startling poem about refraction and resemblances, about the way relationships are stacked in our minds like layers in the double-image that inspired it. I’m not sure how she got to the door she opens for us, but it was the poem that woke me up into a new and unexpected space.”

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May 24, 2018

“Facial Recognition” by Janice ZerfasPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2018: Artist’s Choice

 

Through the Looking Glass by Melody Carr

Image: “Through the Looking Glass” by Melody Carr. “Facial Recognition” was written by Janice Zerfas for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2018, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Janice Zerfas

FACIAL RECOGNITION

The real truth is that some of us don’t have
facial recognition, unable to recall
the goblet of a face. Then, we think of rain
falling so sparsely from the gutters that
we wonder if it is rain, especially if the face
is bunched with three pointed leaves
skimming across a pond. The attempt
to recognize begins with the quick look
across the cheekbones, so muddied
with a dirt caramel and studded goldfish
color, like this woman who stands in front
of a window casement chalk cradle white.
Then we identify the strip of the nose,
the soft mouth summing up a sound,
but it’s useless. We have no ability to
even make a forensic analysis
of her face, much less her cauterized eyebrow.
Her face is plaited with leaves and petals;
there’s even a third eye off in its placement—
but, still, all these clues and she’s still unrecalled.
What’s worse, there’s a bird-sniffing
revenant, or ghost, or maybe just her own
shadow behind her, leavening its reclusive
smoky compost. I look at her, and think
if a stranger looked at my face, as I am
glossing over hers, would they see
the morning birds that I listen for each a.m.,
how I look for anything turning over
even in a pallid wind,
or how my body stands in silence at
the bathroom window where I can
get a better view of wind tailings: especially
the dark sharp-shinned hawk,
eyeing the casement that I linger by,
wanting out of the rainfall.
I move to the side, hoping
the crush of leaves will disguise my looking.
It sidles up, giving me another way
to look at a face, my face, wanting.
When I first saw the hawk’s loose-filled
feathers, I thought I saw my own self.
Keep looking, I want to tell her.
Keep deciphering, the face will become
clearer, and the image will return to you.
Just say hello.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2018, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Melody Carr: “My favorite poem was ‘Facial Recognition.’ What I loved in this poem is that there is a level of truth in it that taught me something about the photograph I took, something that I felt with a shock of recognition, the way the poem carefully moves over the face in the photograph, in an almost tactile movement, finding so much truth in each place the poem touches on, and yet so much mystery remaining, hidden in the closest gloss. The ending of the poem reminds me a bit of a story. Kathleen Raine wrote that the mystical view is that there is not one universe with many beings, but instead there are multiple universes, but only one being. This is a wonderful thought to me. I used to go around and think when I would see people passing in cars, that each one was just a form of me in another universe, as I was of them. Everyone a strange universe, everyone me. And by the way, the photograph is a selfie—that’s me—in another universe—almost familiar, but unknown … and reading poems submitted in response to it was quite interesting. It was wonderful to have the chance to engage with a community of poets writing on the picture and delightful to read the poems that it inspired. Thanks to everyone who created their own vision of recognizing a face inspired by seeing the photo.”

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April 26, 2018

“The Visitant” by Marietta McGregorPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2018: Editor’s Choice

 

Chickens! by Marion Clarke

Image: “Chickens!” by Marion Clarke. “The Visitant” was written by Marietta McGregor for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2018, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Marietta McGregor

THE VISITANT

We never found out where she came from, our hen. One morning she was just there, in the back yard. That was one of the times when only two of us, Mum and I, lived in that house. One of the times when Dad had gone off, we didn’t know where, driven by demons we couldn’t imagine. It happened at unpredictable moments. Something would set him off, he’d start drinking, and he’d disappear. We had the house to ourselves. Life settled down a bit. I’d go off to my Seventh Day Adventist Primary school each day and hurry home, glad to have Mum to myself.

And then someone else came to live with us, this plump, glossy Black Orpington, gentle and sweet-natured. She loved a cuddle, and would sit on my knee, crooning soft warm chicken songs for hours while I stroked and settled her feathers and babied her as my special doll. She had a whole repertoire of contented burbles and trills. Sitting with her warm bulk on my knee I felt happy, protected. I wondered who she was, really.

I found out much later that chickens make about 30 different sounds. We’d do well to learn their language. I tried murmuring her talk back to her, which she seemed to like, arching her neck under my hand, fluffing and resettling herself. I don’t remember how long she stayed with us, I only remember the pleasure of having her there. One day she wasn’t. There were no signs of pain or mayhem—no foxes in Tasmania in those days. We thought she must have moved on to warble to another family.

My father came home later that year. He’d been in a War Repatriation Hospital for some time, and looked ill and tired, the emphysema beginning to cave in his chest. We never saw the chicken again.

a handful of mash
that ache for something
different

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2018, Editor’s Choice

[download audio]

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Comment from the editor: “To be honest, every time I encounter a haibun, I read the haiku first; I can’t help myself. The haiku here is wonderful, in a wonderfully inexplicable way. You could probably write an essay on how ‘that ache for something new’ is like ‘a handful of mash’—and there’s no doubt it is. That sense of juxtaposition is the power of haiku. And then I read the prose, and what a moving and honest story that turned out to be, too—and again perfectly juxtaposed with the haiku, which I read again thereafter. This is an exemplary haibun, and another example of a poet turning a single image into its own entire universe.”

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