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      January 28, 2021A Horizon Is Vague at a DistanceMartin Willitts Jr.

      Image: “Old” (acrylic on paper, 24x32cm, 2018) by Dominique Dève. “A Horizon Is Vague at a Distance” was written by Martin Willitts Jr. for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
      I had tried to construct her memory,
      but the image is grey winter clouds
      before a snow storm breaks silence
      in half, flakes like skin, yank-rips off
      like bandages. I can’t remember
      the good days cross-stitched. Every
      haunting footstep, every turnstile
      to an exit or entrance, every spinning-
      jenny making fragments, splintering
      again, again. Memory is muddy now.
      It’s been too long, too many seasons,
      too many things we never said, too
      much shattering. When does memory
      begin or end? splinters glass? I try
      assembling pieces that don’t fit.
      I mold her face out of clay.
      Each particle of memory dissolves
      as snowflakes on a tongue, crumbles
      whatever we needed desperately to say.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the editor, Timothy Green

      “So much emotion bleeds from this poem, which transforms the painting into a fading memory, that the sorrow and longing feel inexhaustible. Every time I re-read it, I find I’m holding my breath by the end.”