July 25, 2019

Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2019: Artist’s Choice

 

Blue Whale by Nikki Zarate

Image: “Blue Whale” by Nikki Zarate. “Ink Blots” was written by Matt Quinn for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2019, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

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__________

Matt Quinn

INK BLOTS

Perhaps because there were currents swirling
within the silence, or because a seagull
was shrieking outside the window
or in my head, or because in the end I had to

say something, I said I saw a whale.
Go on, he said. A blue whale, then, I said.
Go on, he said. And because it seemed important
to start at the beginning, I told him of a wolf

that had grown weary of the shallow
society of wolves and had left its pack and drifted
out into the deep ocean. Go on, he said,
and I told him how the salt water had held

the wolf, and how the wolf liked to float, cradled
by the blue, and how its legs transformed
into flippers and its body became huge
and blubbered against the cold, so that the wolf

floated suspended inside that giant body,
just as that body floated in the ocean,
and how the blue water stained that body blue
as if the sea were made of ink. Go on, he said.

In time, I said, it found it could no longer return
to the land, and some nights it sang songs
of its lost pack, and evermore it wandered solitary
in the great ocean. And what else? he asked.

So I told him of how once a blue whale finally
came ashore, how wounded by a harpoon
and desperate to breathe, it beached itself
near Bragar, on the small island of Lewis,

and how they had planted its jaw-bones
as an arch by the side of a road, and had hung
the harpoon from it, as a memorial, perhaps,
or perhaps as a warning. And I told him of ship-strikes,

and how easy it was to become entangled
in the debris of other people’s nets, and also of the noise
their engines make, and how finally their sonar
had drowned the last of my mourning songs.

And these smaller ink blots, he asked,
that surround the whale, what are these? Jellyfish,
I said quickly, not meeting his eye, spineless companions
of the whale, translucent blobs of floating

nothing, drifting along with it. For I knew better
than to tell this man the truth,
that the blue whale had sought refuge
in the basement-womb of the deepest blue ocean,

and that there were depth charges
exploding all around it.

from Ekphrastic Challenge
June 2019, Artist’s Choice

__________

Comment from the artist, Nikki Zarate: “I enjoyed the back and forth conversation between the story teller and the listener. It was as if I was sitting beside a fire, being told a legend or a fairytale. The poem also did a wonderful job of connecting the sea with the land, through the whale and the wolf. It kept my interest and I wanted more and that rarely happens for me.”

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November 28, 2015

Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2015: Editor’s Choice

 

Photograph by Ana Prundaru
Photograph by Ana Prundaru. “The View from the Café” was written by Matt Quinn for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2015, and selected by Timothy Green as the Editor’s Choice winner.

[download broadside]

__________

Matt Quinn

THE VIEW FROM THE CAFÉ

Six men haul a jet ski out of a placid sea
that’s flashing cream-soda in the evening sun;
they drag it up onto the beach and cover it
in a shroud of plastic. And Paul says:

I think that in some way we are all refugees
and leaves it hanging there in the salty breeze.
So Jane steps in and tells of us of this dream she had
where the whole world was packed inside a giant coracle,

except really it was only thousands of people
that she saw, but in the dream she knew
it was the population of the whole planet crushed
together and drifting on an unending ocean

in a boat that might so easily tip over or break apart.
She says that seen from above the bright colours
of people’s ethnic clothing against the blue-green sea
made it all seem so beautiful it could have been a photo

in a Sunday magazine. We kick the metaphor about
for a while as Paul wanders off to buy the next round
of beers, and I store the image away just in case
there’s a poem I can slip it into later. Then John says

that surely we are all evicted from our homes
at birth, squeezed naked and defenceless
out into the cold and the clamour, the gate double-locked
behind us by an angel with a flaming sword.

We watch the men emerge from the sea a second time,
and Paul says that really, if you think about it,
we’ve been refugees ever since we first dragged
ourselves out of the ocean on makeshift limbs, choking

back the oxygen in our brand-new lungs. Meanwhile
I’m working on something clever to say about Heidegger’s
notion of unheimlichkeit and how, existentially
speaking, none of us is ever truly at home anywhere

in this world. Now the six men are back in the water
herding the third empty jet ski up onto its trailer.
Susan drains her beer and says she’s never seen a refugee
on a jet ski. I can’t tell if she’s bored of this game,

or is somehow trumping us all. We watch the sun sink
into the waiting sea, then Jane calls for the bill.
It’s cold on the beach, and no one’s brought a coat.
We finish up our drinks and head for home.

Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2015
Editor’s Choice Winner

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I love the way that this poem turns the photograph into a vignette that we can all enter, as readers. There is something uncanny about the image, juxtaposed against recent newspaper photographs of Syrian refugees, and Quinn manages to articulate and then illuminate that uneasy feeling.”

Note: This poem has been published exclusively online as part of our monthly Ekphrastic Challenge, in which we ask poets to respond to an image provided by a selected artist. This October, the image was a photograph by Ana Prundaru. We received 115 entries, and the artist and Rattle’s editor each chose their favorite. Ana Prundaru’s choice was posted the previous 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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