“Telling It Through a Broken Lens” by Bola OpalekePosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2021: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Cloud Dance” by Claire Ibarra. “Telling It Through a Broken Lens” was written by Bola Opaleke for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “This month’s mind-bending image seems full to me of a strange longing that’s difficult to describe. Everything is mirrored but the birds, which are somehow free from the constraints of this universe. Bola Opaleke’s poem matches that intensity in a similarly abstract way, deepening the metaphor and pushing it into new territory. This was the poem that I kept returning to, and it felt more profound each time.”
Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2019: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Dog Walking” by Alice Pettway. “A Caricature” was written by Bola Opaleke for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, November 2019, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
__________
Bola Opaleke
A CARICATURE
Where I came from,
the street is another religion
& my feet know
all its worship songs
by heart. It effuses a silence that arouses
the slumbering houses;
make me watch their breasts as they rise
& fall. My moment
of peace & tranquility is
when I can look the most human
behind the chromatic harmony
of car honks. Am I not a common sight, marveled
at colors; yellow grass, green trees,
red flowers? I know whatever is not black
or white begs another name. & before I got pollinated
inside this religion, I developed a new body
which blinks only once a day like the streetlamp
of a graveyard. Surrounded
by shadows, I am not as lonely as people
think. I have a skeleton dog lost to the street as I.
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “The power of this poem lives within the title that undercuts it. As I read, I get lost in this idea of the street as a religion. I’m lulled by the blinking streetlamp in a graveyard and forget that what I’m lulled by is only a caricature—and that was always the tension within the photograph: that interplay between the scene and our interpretation of it. This is a poem with several layers of meaning, about the scene, about ourselves as viewers, and about the power of narrative to cloud our thinking.”
Bola Opaleke: “This poem is for ‘Dreamers’ who grow up knowing America as their only home. The POTUS plan to end DACA is one that sends a spear through the heart. It calls for a reflection on how politicians often ignore human frailty and human fragility in their everyday decisions.” (web)
