Åsa Antalffy Eriksson

June 26, 2015

“Abduction” by Kate GaskinPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2015: Editor’s Choice

 

Painting by Åsa Antalffy Eriksson

[download broadside]

__________

Kate Gaskin

ABDUCTION

When was the last
time I touched your hair
pale as milk, face wan

as the carton that claimed it?
Another day the trees
knit tighter to the one

before until the forest chokes.
But it wasn’t, as I’d remembered,
a great adventure,

packing sandwiches,
coming home when there was
nothing better to do.

My love, they found you not
in a copse of firs
but interred, after a wretch

of weeks, bone-white
and weathered
in a fist of gravel.

Has it been this way
forever? You holding
the basketball that night

beneath a sky scattershot
with stars, and then
the sound of you gone,

how the ball bounced once,
twice, then rolled to a stop
in the empty parking lot.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2015
Editor’s Choice Winner

[download audio]

__________

Comment from the editor, Timothy Green, on his selection: “Choosing your favorite from a large stack of poems is easy: Just read them all and wait for your blood to run cold. Kate Gaskin’s poem is chilling, but it’s also a well-crafted lesson in poetic symbolism and syntax, winding its way to the final heart-stopping image. I wish I could forget a few of the lines, but I know that I won’t be able to.”

Note: This poem has been published exclusively online as part of our quarterly Ekphrastic Challenge, in which we ask poets to respond to an image provided by a selected artist. This May, the image was a painting by Åsa Antalffy Eriksson. We received 187 entries, and the artist and Rattle‘s editor each chose their favorite. Åsa’s choice was posted last Friday. For more information on the Ekphrastic Challenge visit its page. See other poets’ responses or post your own by joining our Facebook group.

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June 19, 2015

“Teeny Tiny” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2015: Artist’s Choice

 

Painting by Åsa Antalffy Eriksson

[download broadside]

__________

Matthew Murrey

TEENY TINY

It took forever for the light
to fade. All my manhood,
that old overcoat, was gone,
and I was no more than five
setting off through the forest.

They say in a vacuum a feather
falls like a stone. They say
you see your life pass before you
when you’re at death’s door.
They say jawbone walk
and jawbone talk. They say
things I’ll never understand.

I remember a story of a tiny boy
and his two older brothers lost
in the woods. They found shelter
for a night in the house of a stranger
who kept sharpening a long knife,
who kept calling up to the loft,
“Who is awake, and who is asleep?”

I couldn’t stay awake forever.
Even here the feather finally lands
on the needled path, the heart
has a weight all its own,
and every step I take erases me
just a little more. See,
you can barely see me.
What I’m trying to tell you is
it wasn’t a light at the end of a tunnel,
and it wasn’t as scary as the scrape
of a knife being readied on a stone.
Then again, it wasn’t a walk in the park either.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2015
Artist’s Choice Winner

[download audio]

__________

Comment from the painter, Åsa Antalffy Eriksson, on her selection: “This was hard. As I read through the poems, I thought it would be impossible to select a winner. Then I read them again, and again, and forced myself to drop one after the other. Quite a few of the poems made me cry—many had written about a child lost, and some of those pieces were almost too much to bear: well-written, deeply touching and evoking one of my greatest fears as a mother. Yet, I did not choose any of them for a winner. In the end, the poem I could not drop was Matthew Murrey’s ‘Teeny Tiny.’ It has a good flow and not a single weak line. It balances perfectly between narration and suggestion, presenting a sombre theme with a sort of casualness that appeals to me no end. ‘Teeny Tiny’ echoes the atmosphere and the imagery of my painting faithfully, but also adds something completely new and unexpected.” (website)

Note: This poem has been published exclusively online as part of our quarterly Ekphrastic Challenge, in which we ask poets to respond to an image provided by a selected artist. This May, the image was a painting by Åsa Antalffy Eriksson. We received 187 entries, and the artist and Rattle‘s editor each chose their favorite. Timothy Green’s choice will be posted next Friday. For more information on the Ekphrastic Challenge visit its page. See other poets’ responses or post your own by joining our Facebook group.

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