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      April 24, 2025Matt JosephA Skeleton Walks into an Art Class

      where it sees the living,
      trying their best to paint a skeleton
      doing what skeletons do, which is lots of hanging around
      on metal stands, their eye sockets
      bony cups filled with silence,
       
      or doing what skeletons don’t do, normally,
      like cuddling, or giving birth,
      given the lack of a womb
      or a lover, though it may have had both
      when it was wrapped in flesh and sinew,
      filled with organs and desires and doubts,
       
      but in the painting, it’s just bones on a bed,
      femurs wishboned apart, pelvis spitting a baby out
      onto the sheets, which makes the visiting skeleton think,
       
      hell, anything’s possible, so let me invite a buddy,
      and we’ll paint the living,
      doing what they do,
      which looks a lot like trying hard to forget
      they’re a flash of dry lightning, or a strand of hair
      stuck in amber, or maybe a lonely particle
      in a million-mile dust storm, but also, most importantly,
      their life is a warm, cozy duvet
      momentarily draped around a skeleton
      that’s biding its time, impatiently
      waiting for the big reveal.
       
      Image: “Siblings Under the Skin” by Elizabeth Eve King. “A Skeleton Walks into an Art Class” was written by Matt Joseph for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2025, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the artist, Elizabeth Eve King

      “As soon as I saw the title I was hooked. I love its humor, and treatment of skeletons as individuals. I love the simplicity of words and depth of emotion. I love that it somehow captures my work in words.  I love the symmetry. I love the music of the words. I love the image and idea that we are a ‘warm, cozy duvet’ wrapped around our bones. That we spend our time trying to forget we are ‘a flash of dry lightning, or a strand of hair stuck in amber.’ I also loved many of the others and was deeply moved by a few. All of the twenty -nine poems I read are honestly wonderful and deserving of publication. I loved the incredible diversity that sprang from a single, albeit complex, image.”

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