“Here, She Said” by Chris Ransick

January 30, 2018Posted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2017: Editor’s Choice

 

Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore by Barbara Graff

Image: “Cinderella Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” by Barbara Graff. “Here, She Said” was written by Chris Ransick for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2017, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

__________

Chris Ransick

HERE, SHE SAID

It’s not what the light
lets you see, she said, it’s

this, and she pulled my face
underwater with a kiss.

Like amateurs, we covered
ourselves with earth, came up

the hill phosphorescent, as if
we’d hibernated, forgotten

our names. At the top
again we remembered them

and forgot only her shoes,
hallelujah may they glow

there forever above the pressed
turf, the illuminated trace

of pleasure turned to halo
round an embarrassed moon.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
December 2017, Editor’s Choice

[download audio]

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “It might have been the leading nature of the painting’s title, but most of the poems this month stuck to the fairy tale and extended the Cinderella story beyond ‘happy ever after.’ Chris Ransick, though, brought the image back down to earth, which also gave it a new emotional life. What really won me over, though, was the ‘hallelujah’ line, which appears unexpectedly with a feeling of genuine passion.”

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