Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2022: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Dark Figures” by Matthew King. “Why I Love that We’re Not Gods” was written by Sean Keck for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2022, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
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WHY I LOVE THAT WE’RE NOT GODS
If we could live all time at once,
there’d be no room for words
in that total lack of silence.
The sky, grown thick with birds
trailing themselves like film frames,
would buckle and heave, spurred
along by wind and flames,
competing moons and stars,
bodies no longer named
on any legible charts.
Buried beneath thunder
of innumerable heart-
beats half off, under
the weight of too many
todays, we’d wander
nowhere and there. Any-
where you turned
there’d be a litany
of you and me, churned
into an us of each of us,
two we who learn
nothing because the cup
of our choices
is already filled up
with overflowing voices
of every grace and sin
we’d done or do. Noises
all about. The love we’re in,
in that total lack of silence,
won’t end but won’t begin.
—from Ekphrastic Challenge
January 2022, Editor’s Choice
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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “This mind-bending poem compresses time into a single point where our entire lives happen all at once in a silent, frozen time-lapse. It’s a fascinating interpretation of the photograph, worthy of several reads on its own, but the gorgeous musicality of the poem is what put it over the top for me. It’s a layered, memorable, and surprising response.”
