Ekphrasis

October 28, 2021

“Like Dust” by Ian OpolskiPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2021: Editor’s Choice

 

The Blood in the Veins by Rachel Slotnick, painting of Maya Angelou with a river flowing through her and hearts

Image: “The Blood in the Veins” by Rachel Slotnick. “Like Dust” was written by Ian Opolski for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Ian Opolski

LIKE DUST

There you are. Were you lost
In the blue reaches of what could be?
It is no small thing to be one
Little person in our many-colored
Cosmos. Seedling, a high destiny
Awaits you. Now you are down
In the dust, sighing skyward for hope
Of a savior. But what is dust
But an opportunity? Wrap yourself
In it. It’s time to grow. There is no earth
That will not nourish. There are no stones
Too dry that you cannot draw water.
Make lights to rival the sky’s. How
Else will you wreath your head in blooms?
A true queen will crown herself. Worm,
Wriggle in the dark. What is the dark
Except creation’s cradle? Build wings there.
It’s time you flew. But you knew
That already. That head full of dreams
Dreams on, until all its whorls and veins
Build a heart. That’s the most important
Part. The art is in the arteries. Get
The blood flowing. Go, give that heart
Away. It never belonged to you
Anyway. This is a universe full of
Seeds, after all. It’s your turn to do
Some tending. The making of it
All cannot be done by one pair of hands.
So what do you think you’re doing,
Shaking off all that dust? You are
Meant to use it. Take these sorrowful
Threads and weave a brighter dress.
Meet each murmuring morning
With trumpets of yes, yes, yes.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
September 2021, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Rachel Slotnick’s painting captures Maya Angelou’s spirit with beauty and creativity, and this poem does the same. It reads to me like self-talk—a motivational interior monologue in which the speaker tries to imagine the advice Maya might give in the face of difficulty. Given the current mood of the world, the uplifting message of this ekphrastic pairing is especially appreciated. Comments from the author aren’t necessary or part of the selection process, but I thought Ian’s note was worth sharing, too, so I’m including that below.”

Comment from the author, Ian Opolski: “I teach high school English to students who are mostly indifferent to literature. I usually manage to sneak a Maya Angelou poem in each year, regardless of what’s in the prescribed curriculum. She always connects, particularly when the students can watch a video of her perform. I particularly like to teach ‘Still I Rise,’ where she confronts a difficult history with joy, never losing faith in the future or in herself. She seems to have a celestial wisdom and confidence that is both enviable and aspirational. I think Rachel Slotnick’s mural captures that same feeling, with Angelou against a field of stars, flowers and hearts emerging from her being. I see Dr. Angelou here as both creator and nurturer. I hope that I have honored that same optimistic spirit in this poem.”

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October 21, 2021

“Revelations” by Sean WangPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2021: Artist’s Choice

 

The Blood in the Veins by Rachel Slotnick, painting of Maya Angelou with a river flowing through her and hearts

Image: “The Blood in the Veins” by Rachel Slotnick. “Revelations” was written by Sean Wang for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Sean Wang

REVELATIONS

When she left she was already shadow,
the jet black smudge of history
blurred by the cataracts of 93 years
(or 95, my father said people lied
to immigration, when a year could mean a lifetime
lost). She had a joy
burning through paper skin and bamboo bones like a lantern.
Her cold hands covered in brown spots like an overripe banana.

She was fixed to her bed
by a pair of bad legs and a crinkled back.
Some nights her favourite operas and fried noodles
would only gather the flutter of an eye
and she would recede back, back into some past
purring in her head like the tumble of a washing machine.
It would get quieter, just the ticking of the fan
spinning above, time whirring through air.
She woke/slept, a dusk of days.
The last 5 years flickered train-like,
the sleek pulses of blinkers,
a throbbing twilight of fireflies.
Her train had left, and I stood waiting
at the station, the track gaping through the ground
swallowed by the wall, a denture-less mouth.

But I remember when
the room was bouncing with pitchy singing,
the kitchen burning with spices and bossy orders,
and you, the voice and echo.

I believe, in those days where you would stare
at the ceiling, the glazed eye of a fish in ice,
you were seeing
some slice of heaven spread before you,
the pocket of sky you wait in.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
September 2021, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Rachel Slotnick: “After reading ‘Revelations,’ I couldn’t shake its spell. It peers through the eyes of the dying in a way that confronts the limitations of living. Here on earth, we look up at the stars and long for there to be a heaven. This poem speaks to the loneliness too many of us have known in the hospice room. It pinpoints the ache of outliving someone, of being left behind, and being tasked with remembering.”

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September 30, 2021

“Griefsong Heard at Sea” by Shannan MannPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2021: Editor’s Choice

 

Rosetta Stone by Emily Rankin, dolls and other items swirling in large ocean swells

Image: “Rosetta Stone” by Emily Rankin. “Griefsong Heard at Sea” was written by Shannan Mann for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Shannan Mann

GRIEFSONG HEARD AT SEA

She opens her grief as one guts a fish,
nimble and clean, a blade sheened in red.
Don’t let the ocean break you when
you cannot swim. Everyone can swim
until they drown. See, bodies bloating violet
against the surge of each wave, beating
and remembering slivers of a life held
shut like eyes flecked with dreams
of little girls gathering beached shells
under the expanse of a rhyolite sky, singing:
I am a still creature suspended in time!
I am a still creature suspended in time
under the expanse of a rhyolite sky, singing
of little girls gathering beached shells
shut like eyes flecked with dreams
and remembering slivers of a life held
against the surge of each wave, beating
until they drown. See, bodies bloating violet.
You cannot swim. Everyone can swim.
Don’t let the ocean break you, when,
nimble and clean, a blade sheened in red,
she opens her grief as one guts a fish.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
August 2021, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I accidentally read Shannan’s note on the poem before sitting down to compose my own, and now I’m stuck trying to find a way to explain it without repeating what she already said so eloquently. I’ll include that here. All I can add is that the palindrome form is extremely well done, with new meanings and great lines emerging from the reversal. And that I’d characterize the juxtaposition, both in the poem and in the painting, as that of a child splashing around joyfully versus adulthood’s endless struggle to stay afloat within the maelstrom of responsibility. O that we could all swim backward in time.”

Shannan Mann: “Emily’s painting filled me with what initially felt like two mutually exclusive things: a sense of playful innocence and a forlorn ache for everything lost to time. Then, as I continued to explore the artwork, I saw how these two feelings connected. Grief can make us look back and forward simultaneously, madly searching in the ocean of our memories for glimpses and pieces of an innocent time. This is also why I framed this poem as a palindrome. The past sometimes overtakes the present, filling it with grief yet in that very present we can harness the joy of the past and rise above our pain.”

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September 23, 2021

“Oracle” by Robert E. RayPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2021: Artist’s Choice

 

Rosetta Stone by Emily Rankin, dolls and other items swirling in large ocean swells

Image: “Rosetta Stone” by Emily Rankin. “Oracle” was written by Robert E. Ray for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Robert E. Ray

ORACLE

“We are like islands in the sea,
separate on the surface
but connected in the deep.”
―William James

We are out of our element
the earth eroded, washed under
our synthetic feet, saltwater
in our pinched nostrils, reek of sea-

life on our skin, kelp around our necks.
You disorient fish and the whale
fight swells, waves, yellow-bellied snakes
coolly in your peach silk & laced pearls.

A girl’s gold hair is a mean net
unraveled. Between bright topside
and the black bottom, creation—
Darwin’s vessel is lost and found.

From a snapped mast, Scopes’ monkey
screams and howls like North Sea gales.
It’s insufficient oxygen
to the brain, experts say. Absent shepherds

we don’t believe in arks. It is
a woman’s voice—no oracle:
Amphitrite (Poseidon’s committed
to the storm). Make a human chain!

her command, twice repeated.
We are out of our element
the schools of blue fish remind us.
Some give in to the cold water.

You make your limbs fins and pucker
like a perch, swim to the next girl
then a scared boy, another girl
a woman crying for her god.

You know the truth of the earth
harshness of the water, the air:
Save another, save yourself.
Self dispossessed—unburdened

you pull up another, countless
into the rainbow. We were told
the wrong thing in school. Do not quit
is not the same as keep going.

You swim as fast as a sailfish
as a Guadalupe puma runs—
though out of your element.
In this place, there is no helm

no bow, no stern, no starboard, no port
only the human chain underway.
We swim, we run, we fly together.
There’s no death when the spirit breathes

for another. We are reborn
god-like—when
we are out of our element.
Down at the bottom we link hands.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
August 2021, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Emily Rankin: “I love the structure of this poem, and its gorgeous imagery. The work is both timely and timeless, and the motion of the language is beautifully reminiscent of ocean waves.”

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September 15, 2021

“A Short Poem About Many Things” by Lynn RobertsonPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2021: Artist’s Choice

 

While Thinking About Snow and Ice by Jojo, image of intersection lines on a chalkboard

Image: “While Thinking About Snow and Ice” by Jojo. “A Short Poem About Many Things” was written by Lynn Robertson for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Lynn Robertson

A SHORT POEM ABOUT MANY THINGS

On the narrow edge of canvas
an artist leaves unintended
fingerprints, the drifting tail
of an incomplete line, a smudge.
Here, far from the sharp
center of perfection, the real
and imaginary intersect
like belief and science.
One underpinning the other,
neither unsupported.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2021, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Jojo: “‘A Short Poem About Many Things’ resonated with me. It is succinct, yet beautifully philosophical. For me, this poem picks up on a deeper, contemplative feeling that I’d hoped my artwork conveyed, in spite of its initial mathematical appearance. The poem gently examines, and finds evidences of the artist beyond the geometry, the interplay between what is seen and what can be inferred.”

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August 26, 2021

“Aloft” by Heidi WilliamsonPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2021: Editor’s Choice

 

Waste by Lynn Tait, photograph of a sunset with smokestacks in the distance and the silhouette of a bird

Image: “Waste” by Lynn Tait. “Aloft” was written by Heidi Williamson for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2021, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Heidi Williamson

ALOFT

Overcome space, and all we have left is Here.
Overcome time, and all we have left is Now.
—Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

My mother reads distances like light.
She can balance atoms from the sea in the cup of her hand:
those strange creatures beneath the surface of being,
she owns them too. They come home to her
while I linger at the window again watching.

While I linger at the window again watching,
the moment hefts itself off its hinges and swings away into light.
This isn’t a dream. It’s what happens in the day if you look closely enough.
There’s my mother in the sunset, the sunset that goes nowhere
like it’s somewhere. I can knock at the light, but she can’t let me in.
I can knock until my knuckles bleed, but her pain won’t open for me.
The ridges in my fingers swell like waves with the pain
of not holding her hand, not being able to.

Not holding her hand, not being able to:
it isn’t because of the virus, though there’s that too. I’ve never
been able to hold her close. The same way atoms move
because you witness them—your presence disturbs them into action.
My mother would open and close her mouth on the silences
above and below. When I say I love my mother what do I mean.

When I say I love my mother what do I mean. Meaning hovers
like a bird pinned before the factory of thought. Do I mean?
I can assemble atoms into pictures that all contain my mother.
I say I love but what. There is light. There are windows.
This is the moment we have passed.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
July 2021, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Sometimes a poem seems to journey so deep into reflection that it’s hard to understand what inspired it, and that seems to be the case here until we reach the brilliant and moving metaphor in the final stanza. That line is a small poem in a poem full of small poems, and each of them sticks with me.”

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August 19, 2021

“Self-Doubt” by Tamara RaidtPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2021: Artist’s Choice

 

Waste by Lynn Tait, photograph of a sunset with smokestacks in the distance and the silhouette of a bird

Image: “Waste” by Lynn Tait. “Self-Doubt” was written by Tamara Raidt for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Tamara Raidt

SELF-DOUBT

I am not a real poet says the poet
writing about birds and images.

A bird, fluttering in a made-up
horizon doesn’t wonder if it belongs there.

I am not a real bird says the bird that is
a figment of the poet’s imagination.

The evening sky has a peculiar way
to be torn in pieces while still

making sense: take this as the best
example of how human life is made.

Have you asked yourself
who is watching the picture?

If not you, the bird. If not the bird,
you. Between both stretches

a moment of hesitation named
sea. This whole scenery may be

taking place in the synapse
of a painter, but the brush hits you

harder than the axe the frozen sea;
then, one sane instant brings clarity:

there is no bird, just a dark spot
on the retina that you wanted to mistake

for something else. It isn’t the sea,
it is the memory coming back

unwanted in the shape of the sea.
The ones who have suffered

will see it differently: not a bird,
but a plane and towers on fire,

it is true: trauma hits in waves
of salt and sulfur.

Take this as a token for the uncertainty
lying in things. Take this as

the ultimate image of self-doubt:
an ethereal setting of a sunset,

and a poet, in the body of a bird,
wondering if he belongs there.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
July 2021, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Lynn Tait: “What a difficult choice! I wish I could have chosen them all! Very surprised my photo art prompted so many relationship poems especially about mothers. I expected more poems focused on climate change and the environment, yet I ended up choosing ‘Self-Doubt’ with its sense of isolation, questioning one’s purpose, one’s identity in general and as a poet, reminding me of Zhuangzi’s dream of transformation but much darker. What is real, what is imagination? Can one believe what one sees? Different views, different perspectives, the suffering and uncertainty of life. Where do I belong?”

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