Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2017: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Biltmore Backyard” by Robb Shaffer. “A Season of Bricks” was written by Simon Costello for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, October 2017, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
__________
A SEASON OF BRICKS
Out the back a chorus of fog releases over
the ashen crowns that rise up from the red-
brick leaves like the bones of the buried awoken
from a landslide. These lumber gods that stand
centuries breathing with broken and bent limbs,
tentacles sent out to search for each other.
Evergreens huddle in an omen, untouched
by the red and gold that seeps up from the pores
of the land, where the sun no longer stretches out
its burning arms to this smoky plain, as if after
a long day, the forest to the north had lit a match
and quietly fallen asleep in its chair.
—from Ekphrastic Challenge
October 2017, Artist’s Choice
__________
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green, on this selection: “This is such an elegant little poem, so fun to say aloud, that I kept coming back to it just to enjoy the sounds of the language. The more I read it, though, the more I appreciated the way it captures the timelessness of the landscape—and there is a profound mystery in that last line.”
