Jody Kennedy

October 26, 2017

“Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass” by Zoë Brigley ThompsonPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2017: Editor’s Choice

 

Agnes Was Here by Jody Kennedy

Image: “Agnes Was Here” by Jody Kennedy. “Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass” was written by Zoë Brigley Thompson for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2017, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

__________

Zoë Brigley Thompson

SONNET FOR THE HOLE IN THE GLASS

You know the women through every manmade thing
that men have used to trap them: a van’s double doors
closing: a keyboard: letters lined up like crows
on telephone wires: barbs on a fence: a door that opens
to a queue of men: at night stepping onto a white bus:
that moment on the edge of what is about to happen.
In a cell, they choose between sex or jail: the cop car
where they apologize: thank you, Sir, thank you for not
booking me tonight: the papers they sign from hospital
gurneys: or the shiny, blue cellphone light that hooks
them onscreen like tiny, pink fish. Punch a hole
in the glass: cracks spidering: ice too thin to carry
the weight of men: one eye to the gap just
open enough for you to read their names.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
September 2017, Editor’s Choice

[download audio]

__________

Comment from the editor on this selection: “I’m always a sucker for sonnets, even free verse sonnets, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a poet make such good use of enjambment. It seems an odd thing to praise, but each line of ‘Sonnet’ operates like its own wrenching poem, and the end of each line seems to twist the initial image deeper, so that each individual line is a ‘moment on the edge of what is about to happen.’ The poem embodies itself embodying the photograph—amazing. And unforgettable.”

Rattle Logo

October 19, 2017

“Saved or Spared” by Devon BalwitPosted by

Agnes Was Here by Jody Kennedy

Image: “Agnes Was Here” by Jody Kennedy. “Saved or Spared” was written by Devon Balwit for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2017, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

__________

Devon Balwit

SAVED OR SPARED

No meek Agnos dei those
Catholic girls, plaid-skirted

and ready to fight as we huddled
on their turf awaiting the bus

that would ferry us across town
to our school. Above our heads,

in a shatter of stained glass,
hung our poor relative, their

Christ, as trapped as we,
all of us inheriting our stories,

red-letter, calfskin, skinned
knuckles, the slam of a shot-

glass, the kick of a shotgun.
Still womb-wet, we found ourselves

on hostile ground, did our best
to identify the threat, then stood

shoulder to shoulder with those
closest at hand. Befuddled,

we aped furious, anything to stay
behind the punch. We envied

their uniforms, they, our freedom,
neither able to state our creeds

to save our lives. Each day when
the airbrakes hissed, and the doors

swung open, we sighed, unsure
if we’d been saved or merely spared.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
September 2017, Artist’s Choice

__________

Comment from the artist, Jody Kennedy, on this selection: “I really appreciated all of the poems I read (thank you poets), but in the end this writer’s interpretation of the image won me over. It was one of several poems with, surprisingly, a Catholic theme, which I loved. There is a beautiful back and forth tension and in the end we aren’t quite sure, as the title implies, ‘if we’d been saved or merely spared.’”

Rattle Logo