Ekphrasis

May 28, 2020

“Presidential Fitness Test” by Bill HollandsPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2020: Editor’s Choice

 

photograph of a banana hanging on a hook against a yellow and black wall

Image: “Mund” by Laura R. McCullough. “Presidential Fitness Test” was written by Bill Hollands for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Bill Hollands

PRESIDENTIAL FITNESS TEST

Every year we’d suit up for the ritual
humiliation. Seven demonstrations
of my inadequacy for the red-
faced phys ed teachers. Pull-ups
were the worst. I’d eke out one then
fall to the ground and look up
from the dirt at the underside
of their clipboards. Girls did
“hang time” instead, and in 4th grade
Laura Lugar hung in there
for hours. Like a banana
on a hook, she thrust her chin
over the metal bar, curled her body
into a crescent and didn’t
budge. We went back to class
and in between decimals and
diagramming sentences the teacher
let us go back outside and have
another look at Laura. In my mind
she’s hanging there still in her yellow
uniform against the black dirt
and the pale of the morning sky.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2020, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I just couldn’t keep from smiling, thinking about this clever comparison of the banana on a hook to a 4th grader doing ‘hang time.’ Poetry’s job is to help us see the world a little differently, and this poem does that, delightfully.”

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April 30, 2020

“Rain” (Haiku) by Elizabeth McMunn-TetangcoPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2020: Editor’s Choice

 

photograph in black and white of concrete stairs with children drawing in chalk

Image: “Cour des Voraces” by Kenneth Borg. The haiku was written by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

 

rain
eats our chalk drawings
one day older

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2020, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “The very first winner of the Ekphrastic Challenge was a haiku, and it’s nice to have another haiku here six years later. As with most great haiku, the power comes from the tension between the two universes on either side of the cut—the children with their drawings and the viewer, watching through a lens of nostalgia, and with the awareness of mortality. The result is a profound micro-meditation on the nature of time and its illusions.”

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April 23, 2020

“Vast Silence” by Sally CobauPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2020: Artist’s Choice

 

photograph in black and white of concrete stairs with children drawing in chalk

Image: “Cour des Voraces” by Kenneth Borg. “Vast Silence” was written by Sally Cobau for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Sally Cobau

VAST SILENCE

The girls scribble:
Large O,
Demented D,
Curly, swirly S, an elegant
Muse in iron.
The wide ass of the X,
Smack in your face,
The mice skittering up the Z’s.
The triangle of purity, a gate, the shape of your
Yawn, the unstoppable

Force of the letters—
The rolling pins
Of movement,
Spiraling, the cortex/the bulb
The hum of the machine: needle, bobbin.

The girls working in the shadows.
We don’t hear running,
But we almost hear it.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2020, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Kenneth Borg: “I liked the playfulness with the letters; it was as if they were embossed letters and I’m touching the protruding curves, straight lines and the sharp and pointy edges—all emulating the various concrete shapes and forms in the photograph. Not only that, but it weaves in the presence of the girls, flaring up the letters with unassuming, unexpected and dislocated items, creating a vortex of sounds and imagery, typical of such buildings and enclosed spaces. Yet, it’s uncanny, with a somehow unnerving placidity, ending the poem on a dark note which seems to imply something sinister may be lurking underneath this muted hubbub (reflecting the mysterious figure emerging from down beneath perhaps?). It felt like a palette of colours, starting from light, bright colours and ending with dark, enigmatic and murky tones.”

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March 31, 2020

“When Peeled Back” by Mary Ann HonakerPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2020: Editor’s Choice

 

photograph of billboard with posters peeling to reveal previous layers, including a young child with curly hair

Image: “Indietro” by Marc Alan Di Martino. “When Peeled Back” was written by Mary Ann Honaker for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Mary Ann Honaker

WHEN PEELED BACK

Beneath morning Folgers, hazelnut creamer,
beneath wet hand-prints of fog lifting slowly from the window,
beneath thick-inked newspaper and glossy ads rolled into it,

Beneath the smudge of newsprint on your forefinger as your heartbeat
drops another octave, as all the fucks you could give drain from you
more slowly than floodwater drains to lowlands, to ditches,

Beneath the archaic metal dragon unfolding its thin tendons
over the parking lot of smashed Biggie cups and tumbleweed napkins,
all of its teeth filled in, jagged, askew, with bedewed shopping carts,

Beneath neon codes of signs and symbols of every chain restaurant,
store, coffee shop, the same everywhere beckoning you to the same flavors,
beneath the crushed liquor store box the dread-headed homeless woman sits on,

Beneath the coin you do or do not drop into her strangely fresh, white paper cup,
beneath words you speak flatly over and over again at work, because it’s a script
and you cannot, must not deviate, because they are always listening,

Beneath the momentary joy of finding sugar-skull themed coasters,
beneath the low frequency satisfaction of setting them out on your end tables,
and how quickly that glow, like drunkenness, is replaced by a hollow ringing,

Beneath getting everything you want and finding yourself still unhappy,
beneath making a new list to tick off and fall of the cliff of,
beneath how the bones of your city are starting to show, siding in the side-yard,

rafters bare now that the skin of roof has been peeled off or has fallen in
like the cheeks of a young woman’s body as it mummifies on some remote hillside,
beneath the bruises on a child’s arm, the circular stains in the crease of a father’s elbow,

Beneath it all when peeled back you find the cruel face of some fey spirit,
whose plump pink hands rub together all the smooth stones of your riverbed:
a god guileless, feral, who smirks at you from under the skin of the world.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2020, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Reading this poem feels to me like watching a flying trapeze act. It’s a thrill to see these images tumble out, but how long can the poet possibly keep it going, and how will the poem to land? Then we reach the final lines, which might be the best of the whole poem, and she sticks the landing with the colon. Brava!”

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March 26, 2020

“They Tried to Cover Her Up” by Stephanie ShlachtmanPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2020: Artist’s Choice

 

photograph of billboard with posters peeling to reveal previous layers, including a young child with curly hair

Image: “Indietro” by Marc Alan Di Martino. “They Tried to Cover Her Up” was written by Stephanie Shlachtman for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Stephanie Shlachtman

THEY TRIED TO COVER HER UP

She witnessed the induction of matter
into everything, and they, too, witnessed
the induction of matter into everything;
a constitution for the cosmos. But that was
eons ago when the quiet creases

in her dress were fresh, the hemline a
proper length. (They were afraid of those
curls: Those curls would turn to spider silk
in fifteen years or so; a girl who can look you
in the eyes speaks volumes—too

loud.) And now, Canis Major endeavors
to ascribe her effulgence to its unfettered
glow, now that she, too, is a constellation. Now
that she, too, can fill the space without

apology. How did night not see her (of course,
it did) on the lens of a telescope, when
“all luminaries” did not mean “all luminaries,”
when her painted elements were immured
by skylights in a nebula. When her little lights

cried, her older ones, too. When her little lights
died, her older ones, too, because of
disproportional brushstrokes, because of
unequal distances to and from the sun.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2020, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Marc Alan Di Martino: “What stopped me in my tracks were the last lines: ‘because of / disproportional brushstrokes, because of / unequal distances to and from the sun.’ Is it a veiled social critique, a treatise on painting, or an essay on cosmology? Perhaps it’s all three together, which is why it has to be a poem.”

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February 27, 2020

“Cheer” by Sean KelbleyPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2020: Editor’s Choice

 

watercolor painting of nighttime street scene with liquor store

Image: “Open All Night” by Kate Peper. “Cheer” was written by Sean Kelbley for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Sean Kelbley

CHEER

The kid outside the liquor store is one of mine:
5th period, sits halfway back. Laughs at my puns,
but I should cross the street and scare him off.
How much of 17 is trying to stand convincingly

in places you’re not old enough to be? He shifts
his weight, configures spine and mouth and brow
inexpertly. Experiments with where to put his arms
and stick his thumbs. I want to see if anybody

buys it. Or, I want to see the father of the kid come out,
the way my father, once a year for years, came smiling/
laughing out, and hear him joke about the “Naughty List,”
and watch him hoist a fifth of gin one-handed overhead

like it’s the only gift worth getting. Then I want the kid
to disappear. Maybe he’s old enough to drink with mom
and dad—Singapore Slings, before they tumble like a happy
pillow family down the street to Spanish Midnight Mass—

except, remembering the drink has got a funny name,
he’ll giggle through the Homilía. I want him gone, but that
will happen soon enough. Like drinks and Mass with only
dad, and after that, just drinks with dad, and after that,

inheritance—a crate of dusty bottles: bitters, kirsch,
Grand Marnier. One Christmas Eve, a man will tell himself
there’s time, there still is time to cross the street and go
inside before they lock up shop. To grab some cheer,

before it’s just the glow of ornaments he’s known for
30 years. Before it’s just the light that shines through
other peoples’ windows, when they’re home.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
January 2020, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I realized I’d be choosing this poem four lines in: ‘How much of 17 is trying to stand convincingly / in places you’re not old enough to be?’ How true is that? And how interesting a thought. Those two lines would have been enough for me, but then the last lines are just as good. I’ve never been a high school teacher, but I understand the student-teacher relationship considerably better for having read this poem.”

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February 20, 2020

“An Index of Visitors” by Ajay KumarPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2020: Artist’s Choice

 

watercolor painting of nighttime street scene with liquor store

Image: “Open All Night” by Kate Peper. “An Index of Visitors” was written by Ajay Kumar for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Ajay Kumar

AN INDEX OF VISITORS

I’ve seen something like this somewhere, all the time.
white, black & red the first colors. as we enter november,

the weather turns december. as it was june, it was also may.
remember, all the buildings blurring by to the next station.

remember the index of visitors, the middle-finger ring-fingers,
singers whose songs were just extended foreplays.

an old couple practice arranging furniture on the street,
still looking for the house they were sent to. sunglass-seller

on the newspaper-road-blanket looks polaroidal, as we enter
the new year, kaleidoscopic weather, stuck in the last decade.

swinging lighters caught the ruddiness of the white of eyes.
tea, tap, tray, gully rap to traffic-beat-hymns of highway

protests. blushing heel in my soiled hands, on my crossed legs,
soiling them too. we came out & went back in through somewhere else,

& being told about a way from the inside, we realized
how everything’s connected by a skeleton of ladders, like roads,

like railway lines, computer chips, germs of the lips of canon-mouths.
still, I see something like this somewhere all the time but every time

is different, with new unstill flames. the old couple pack up with all
their wooden things in the back of a truck to the next station. on fridays,

the sunglass-seller sells toy parrots instead, which fly into the neon lights
until the next. this time, from this body place the car has already moved

away half towards the blinding light. but as it was gone,
it was also there, waving & particle, all the time.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
January 2020, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Kate Peper: “Ted Kooser wrote, ‘… I hope that after I have labored over my poems … they look as if they’d been dashed off in a few minutes, the way good watercolor paintings look.’ One of the many things I love about this poem—and why I kept coming back to it—was that it embodied the very essence of what Ted Kooser wrote: immediacy, quickness and unexpected moments. I’m also a sucker for surreal imagery. And this poem manages to link ‘by a skeleton of ladders’ all its wild bounty into something beautiful and cohesive, and yet elusive. In the end, the poet’s attempt—like my attempt to paint a street scene at night—realizes it can never be captured: ‘… it was gone,/ it was also there, waving & particle, all the time.’”

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