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      December 30, 2024After RainMichelle Pfeifer

      Image: “Paradigm Shift” by Morgan Reed. “After Rain” was written by Michael Pfeifer for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
      She appears as blue
      shadows across the market
      dust at Adiba
      where the umbrella-makers rattle
      and shape their ephemera,
      confident as a mystery
      waiting to be told.
      Holding a ticket
      for a train of sand and fear.
      Pale resurrection sisters
      surround her. Their dark
      umbrellas eclipse the sun
      to hide her face. Her face
      a streambed of fog
      and remembrance,
      a collapsing umbrella after rain.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the series editor, Megan O'Reilly

      “For a relatively short poem, ‘After Rain’ speaks volumes, using brief imagistic phrases to create a narrative that feels real and multifaceted. Morgan Reed’s image does this, too—the use of color and sense of movement allow the viewer to imagine the scene coming alive with sound and motion. The poet packs a great deal of meaning into illusorily simple phrases like ‘shape their ephemera,’ ‘confident as a mystery,’ and ‘a train of sand and fear.’ That one of the women in the painting—all of whom have their backs turned to us, in an artistic decision that seems significant—is described as having a face like ‘a collapsing umbrella after rain’ is both a beautiful, evocative piece of imagery and a congruous summation of the main themes of the painting.”

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