Megan Merchant

June 30, 2020

“There Are Two of Us” by Vasvi KejriwalPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2020: Editor’s Choice

 

photograph black bird flying in silhouette

Image: “Shadowplay” by Megan Merchant. “There Are Two of Us” was written by Vasvi Kejriwal for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Vasvi Kejriwal

THERE ARE TWO OF US

Scene from Apocalypse Now

Two faces pressed against
the heat of a smoky, burner stove sky.
They stared outside each other.
One spoke, “My husband’s last word
was morphine.” The faded canary
of her dress reeked of tiredness and wine.
To this, the other said, “The war goes on.
Like the river beyond this north wall
does not forget to flow.”
He reclined, bare-chested,
like a pumiced wooden doll.
She countered, “Sometimes, we forget
whether we are animals or Gods.”
Against the night-black morning,
the pearls on her throat were a bloodless white.
He smoked away his conscience with his pipe,
with the air of an immortal,
as if to fuel an entire sun in his chest,
and declared, “The river does not care
that we kill or we love.
You cannot step on it twice.”
His lips then froze where they slightly parted
like edges of a still lake.
They sat in quiet, their faces ablaze,
and listened to the flap
of a blackbird’s broken wings.
One thought of its feathers.
The other thought of its flight.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2020, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I was fascinated with the way this tied together Megan Merchant’s photograph with Apocalypse Now—such an imaginative leap just in the premise of the poem, which quickly shifts into a scene of interior conflict over the nature of perception. And then what an ending. After selecting the poem, I realized Vasvi included a note that explains it all better than I ever could, so I’ll just include that.”

Vasvi Kejriwal: “This image took me back to the scene in the film, ‘Apocalypse Now’, between Martin Sheen and Aurore Clément. It is an interaction between two people: one person who has had to kill in him all scope of vulnerability to fight a war, and another person who is unafraid of revealing her own. I think, within all of us, we have two such people—this is a universal dialogue that is also an internal dialogue, which has unfolded within each one of us—at least at some point in our lives. I selected visual and conversational elements from this scene and juxtaposed it against Megan Merchant’s photograph. The smoky haze of the sky highlighted the clear cut outline of the bird in flight—as if the flight was the only certain feature in the image. I wanted to question this certainty by portraying how this itself is an illusion. There was also something about the element of flight in this photograph: although it evoked hope, it didn’t promise to solve anything. Through this poem, I’ve tried to capture this: one image can elicit a completely different response from two separate people. And at any one given time, a spectrum of responses resides within each of us. It is within our discretion: which response will be allowed to take control of our mind?”

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June 25, 2020

“Copulations” by Marjorie ThomsenPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2020: Artist’s Choice

 

photograph black bird flying in silhouette

Image: “Shadowplay” by Megan Merchant. “Copulations” was written by Marjorie Thomsen for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Marjorie Thomsen

COPULATIONS

The woman from the zoo said a bird often sneaks copulations
with the next-door neighbor bird
while her male is off getting nesting material.
A man I know collects milligrams
of potassium, ugly yams and containers
of coconut water, near obsession
when basic staples are needed for the pantry. Another gathers
nothing, his body so flagrant with indifference
who can blame mother bird?
I’ve sought my neighbor
for ham sandwiches, conversation,
her male off accumulating knowledge
and roughage when all she wants is her name
bouncing about his mouth. I will tell my son
when he’s older to keep
it simple—bright throws for a home’s sofa,
scraps of paper for handwritten messages,
maybe farm honey and a grooved
wooden dipper. My grandfather often arrived with an earnest
purchase: egg cups in pairs for his collection, each small
round emptiness anticipating the planet’s most perfect food.
He brought home songs with moons doing things,
sang refrains about give and take
while my grandmother happily flapped
her rugs against the porch door to his birdsong.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2020, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Megan Merchant: “There is a sneaky joy and nostalgia at play in this poem that I really enjoyed, as well as the unexpected way the poem flows and connects—much like wings flapping.”

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November 26, 2019

“Letter to My Mother, One Year After Her Death” by Megan MerchantPosted by

Megan Merchant

LETTER TO MY MOTHER, ONE YEAR AFTER HER DEATH

You should know that the circus is holographic now—
whips are muted beams of light, the elephants,

like holy ghosts, no longer leave giant shits or hoofprints
on the dirt. Now the big top smells like warm nuts and popcorn.

I know this would be a happiness for you. That you would
still be shoveling the sunrise out at the barn, mothering

me into a hard time if the tumor hadn’t grown planetary,
changed our trajectory. Grief has its own gravity.

I’ve found it waiting in the slips for the one moment
I stop habitually looking at my feet.

I’ve looked for you as leftover moon, on burnt toast,
in the wilting of leaves that hold a keyhole of light,

but mostly I pause for ravens that sling like a lasso
between the trees, anything that makes me feel alive.

I stole a mug that was smeared with your lipstick, red,
the handle sticky from the honeyed toast you loved.

Did you know that a scientist discovered that the elastic
threads in honey twist and coil the same way a cowboy

creates the Kansas City Tornado with his whip. It all boils
down to geometry, timing, and speed. I rolled your death

between my fingers for months, the sharpest edges of it.
I calloused and can hold fire now, without a shock of warning.

I can press myself against the tip of a knife without losing
my place on the page. When I say your name it’s more

spell than memory. Like waves of light under a big top.
Mom, you should know the show goes on.

The lions and tigers—like a gamma knife removing any
memory of cruelty. A year can do that, mostly.

—from Poets Respond
November 26, 2019

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Megan Merchant: “The man who came up with the idea for a holographic circus was sparked by watching Justin Timberlake’s Superbowl half-time performance—the one where he projected Prince. I remember how much people hated that moment and how much bad press he got from it. It’s pretty cool to look back and see how that infamous performance was the catalyst for a way to elimainate animal cruelty. It’s even sweeter knowing that Prince was a lifelong vegan and animal rights activist.” (web)

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June 20, 2019

“The Years We Lived in the Desert” by Megan MerchantPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2019: Artist’s Choice

 

Desert Road by Ellen McCarthy

Image: “Desert Road” by Ellen McCarthy. “The Years We Lived in the Desert” was written by Megan Merchant for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2019, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Megan Merchant

THE YEARS WE LIVED IN THE DESERT

I cooked without sugar, left the picture frames empty,
learned how to speak fluently about juniper,

elm, and pine to fill that dust-space. We married, deboned
fish on the back porch, drank wine

with fruits infused and I lied openly when you asked about
my dreams, what woke me shaking and soaked.

Vacancy is not an adequate splint for love. I was told to treasure
the red dust that grained in my hair and ears, the phantom

rain, the flat-earthers who gathered and measured the arc of sunset—
the shape of the world is as good of a religion as any,

but my god, have you heard the panged-song of coyotes, their
voice-wound loud, not afraid to tremble, not stomping

to smooth the cracks, or pausing in the open long enough
to pull the yucca spines from their skin.

The years we lived in the desert, I woke each day with a plan
to leave, drew maps of the land along the bottoms

of my feet, and practiced blurring into the infertility, not as an
art form, but as a relief.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2019, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Ellen McCarthy: “I shot the picture sitting on the back of a truck, struck by the radiant blast of two colors and two simple shapes and felt a jolt of joy. So it startled me that this image aroused so many poems about disquiet or dejection—’their/ voice-wound loud.’ My chosen poem’s first line yanked me by the hair into its doleful world: ‘I cooked without sugar, left the picture frames empty …’ By the last line, I had forgotten my original vision and was nodding in agreement: Yes, yes, the desert can ravish us in more ways than one. It’s a land where we must always have an escape plan.”

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July 2, 2017

“A Town Praying for Rain” by Megan MerchantPosted by

Megan Merchant

A TOWN PRAYING FOR RAIN

The man at the bar says
the moon isn’t full enough
for her milk to drop.

I plug a quarter in the
jukebox and dance
anyway,

the bass beat of slurry
planes bellying low
overhead.

Someone spills a beer,
that hints of cinder
at the tail end.

It is in our hair—
the ash—fine
coating windows
and cars,

the hills—ghost-lit
with loss.

The waitress says,
it looks like sunset
at noon

and calls her children
to see if the road
home has closed.

I drive home
the way of grasslands,

past nineteen flags
planted into the earth.

Horses flank the side
of the road,
galloping.

For those who cannot
haul out
it has come to this—

stamping a name
and address
along the body

of the horse
before setting it free.

—Poets Respond
July 2, 2017

[download audio]

__________

Megan Merchant: “I live at the edge of a town that is burning (Goodwin Fire), at the edge of a month that marks a tremendous loss (the Granite Mountain Hotshots). We have declared a state of emergency, but there is no chaos. There are people opening their homes, donating supplies, hauling out livestock and elderly—there is a community that has worn loss and sacrifice, but also resiliency and compassion. We are all praying to our gods for rain.” (website)

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August 21, 2016

“Road Closure, Aleppo” by Megan MerchantPosted by

Megan Merchant

ROAD CLOSURE, ALEPPO

When I hear, on the radio,
that your road is closed,

I think of the desert monsoon
that razed the edges
of our highway,

the only way out—
overcome

and how, completely stuck,

I thought it looked the way
my mother did when
she tucked her lower lip

to dam
the words
that wanted to leave

but would wash out
the bridge of every conversation
she had to try politely
to cross

simply because she
was a woman,

which meant she had
lips that would riven
and silt.

But closing our road
did not mean
that fruit and meat
would rot scarce,

or hold us inside a city crumbed,
where raids shamble night
and the sky is filigreed with smoke,
not stars,

and I do not have dreams
where bullets knock
door to door
looking under beds
for my children,

wanting to gnarl their
hair with sulfured breath.

I imagine you, other mother,
who knows your children
cannot swim,

but that also they cannot sleep
when the walls
are broken piano keys
thudding

and hunger is a wing
flapping
against barbed ribs,

and each lullaby is sung
under a dry tongue
waltzing inside of your mouth.

When our road closed
the neighborhood kids
inflated rafts
to float the flood-mile
for fun

and it was lightening
that blackened the ground,
thunder that bucked against fences.

I imagine, if I could touch
your hand, we would both say
that destruction is a root of nature,

but whelmed
under our tongues—
the word that means man.

—Poets Respond
August 21, 2016

[download audio]

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Megan Merchant: “If you are a mother and see this photo, do you feel more than someone else?” (website)

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