Ekphrasis

October 1, 2019

“Bee Sting in the Eye” by James ValvisPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2019: Editor’s Choice

 

Photo collage of a bee near a woman's eye

Image: “Thai Bees” by Kim Tedrow. “Bee Sting in the Eye” was written by James Valvis for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2019, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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James Valvis

BEE STING IN THE EYE

I’ve long said there is no such thing as a sad poem.
If you want sad, go find a disease or divorce. Go find

a dead child crushed under a car tire. Go find the bee sting
in the eye of your love. If you want sad, look at the soiled hands

of the soldier in Afghanistan, either side, or the hollow zero
of a starving child’s toothless mouth. If you want depression,

go find your great-great-grandfather’s grave under the grime
of a century. A poem walks into a room, says hello, and leaves

you to your prostate tumor. Go find the woman who knows
she should have married you when you proposed, and now

lives with the regret you never feel except when you think
of the woman you eventually married. Go stand in the rain

and watch how many stand at their windows and laugh at you.
There is darkness in this life, all right, but if you want to find it

you better shut the poetry book and stare out into deep space
where nothing presses in on everything to make more nothing.

All art wants to spare you from the bee sting in the eye by
telling you about others who have been bee stung in the eye.

Thus there is, I say, no such thing as a sad poem. For a poem
asks you to love the eye and love the bee and even love the sting.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
August 2019, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “Though clearly inspired by Kim Tedrow’s collage, James Valvis transcends the ekphrastic project in a way few others have, pricking its way into the heart of art itself. Go big or go home. Each line is as sharp as it is weighty. I’ve read this poem dozens of times and never get bored.”

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September 26, 2019

“Misinterpreting a Collage During Trump’s Presidency” by Jaime MeraPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2019: Artist’s Choice

 

Photo collage of a bee near someone's eye

Image: “Thai Bees” by Kim Tedrow. “Misinterpreting a Collage During Trump’s Presidency” was written by Jaime Mera for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, August 2019, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Jaime Mera

MISINTERPRETING A COLLAGE DURING TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY

I see a wasp. It’s Trump and Pence and every televangelist
that condemns lesbians. Sean Hannity’s anti-LGBT rhetoric,
like the hornet that crawls into the cracks of attics

in America’s heartland, riles up red-hatted white males
to swarm and antagonize by parading their straight pride.
The woman’s eye, sober-wide, is as steady as a steel beam.

Her face is ready for the sting. I look closer at the collage.
Something isn’t right—the broad waist. I discover
it’s a female elm sawfly. Now, it joins

with the woman. The yellow bands around its abdomen
matches the sash worn by Susan B. Anthony as she
marched in Kansas. Gold-colored drops glow with hope.

I’m not surprised that I got it wrong. I keep mixing things up,
seeing something that isn’t there. Last year, during dinner
at my parent’s house, we discussed the Religious Freedom Act.

I said, “Two women in love should be allowed to get a pizza together.”
My brother-in-law said, “We need to protect business owner’s rights.”
I said, “It’s discrimination against the gay community.”

He said, “The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination.”
After that, whenever my parents invited me over, I asked, “Will he
be there?” I skipped my nephew’s high school graduation.

In July, my schnauzer Bogie had to be put down. My parents
away on an Alaskan cruise, my sister busy at nursing school,
my brother-in-law—Brian—offered to come with me.

In the room, we held hands. Before the veterinarian inserted
the needle, Brian kissed the top of Bogie’s head.
It’s common to confuse the sawfly for another pest.

In the larvae stage, it looks similar to a slug. Later, it shifts
slowly into resembling a caterpillar. After pupation, people
presume it’s a wasp. The female’s ovipositor unfolds

like a jackknife and it saws into the stem of the plant to deposit
its eggs. It’s harmless to us—we make the error
of mistaking it for a stinger.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
August 2019, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Kim Tedrow: “This poem surprised me, from the title to the last line. A political poem usually doesn’t work for me unless, like this one, it is grounded in personal experience. The poet braids the historical, political, personal, and entomological into a narrative about how our current crisis infiltrates and alters our perceptions and relationships. The turn, in which the speakers’ relationship with the brother-in-law goes from near estrangement to emotional intimacy, is perfectly executed with the poet’s return to the sawfly. I am also impressed with the research the poet did to identify the insect in the collage. I had no idea that it is a female elm sawfly. The collage itself is ekphrastic, inspired by a poem about the Thai bees that drink human tears. Without knowing what a Thai bee looks like, I just chose something from a clip art book that looked like a bee.”

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August 29, 2019

“Naming the Beasts” by Elizabeth MortonPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2019: Editor’s Choice

 

Photo from Elsewhere by B.A. Van Sise, two cows with jet flying overhead

Image: “Restricted | U.S. Air Force” by B.A. Van Sise from his “Elsewhere” series. “Naming the Beasts” was written by Elizabeth Morton for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2019, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Elizabeth Morton

NAMING THE BEASTS

The planes went down the same day Romulus and Remus
were butchered.
And I walked barefoot through the cattlegrass,
mooed to Romulus and Remus
and they said how do you do?
as though it were an ordinary Tuesday.
As though the stock truck
parked outside the old schoolhouse
were just a metaphor for everything
thrust into double digits. The sky was cheesecake.
Sweetgums were bald to skin and bone. Wind licked
the bluegrass, retelling comedies
only the weather sees. What world is this?
Romulus and Remus were the hot breath
rising from the schoolhouse kettle,
the two sparrows that knocked against the car windshield
on that lonely highway. They were a pair of headlights.
They were possums spent on nightfall, giddy
with the casual light of passing tankers.
Romulus and Remus loped onto the truck ramp,
Said how do you do? And I. And I. And I.
I walked barefoot through embers only to turn back halfway,
to shrug at the ordinary Tuesday, to let what happens
happen. I hid from the bellowing, under husk and chaff,
in the noise of harrower and winnower.
Later, I sat in the diner, watched two planes go down on a city,
into the stubble of people and places
just doing what people and places do.
As though little men falling from windows
were just a metaphor for everything haunted
by what we never fix.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
July 2019, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “That Tuesday being such a gorgeous late-summer day in New York, I was surprised at how many of the poets thought of September 11th when looking at this photograph. I assumed I wouldn’t select one of them—it just doesn’t fit. But then I fell in love with the turns and turns of phrase in this poem, and those two cows loping toward their fate, and I realized that it would have been late-winter in the southern hemisphere, the first buds of spring not quite appearing on the trees. That thought opened something up for me—something about the combination of vastness and interconnectedness of the world—and I’ll never think of 9/11 in quite the same way again. Eighteen years later now, I wouldn’t have thought that possible.”

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August 22, 2019

“Time Travel” by Alida RolPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2019: Artist’s Choice

 

Photo from Elsewhere by B.A. Van Sise, two cows with jet flying overhead

Image: “Restricted | U.S. Air Force” by B.A. Van Sise from his “Elsewhere” series. “Time Travel” was written by Alida Rol for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2019, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Alida Rol

TIME TRAVEL

We served our sentence
under the city’s insomniac glare,
by the racket of garbage trucks
and the screams of all-night sirens,
racked up paychecks and overtime
to the smell of pissed-on
asphalt baked in swampy heat.
After the punishment
of never alone but too often
lonely, we left for the country, took
custody of a glowering sky,
the withering glances of bare trees,
a house full of dust and
crumbled hope. We
have no idea what to do
with the silos, their stern
concrete, or how we’ll feed
the sheep in snow. Feral cats
possess the outbuilding, so we’ve kept
its one door closed. When a pair
of cow-eyed Herefords, the docile
bulk of them, stares at us
like aliens, we understand
we are. We gawk in awe
at their foreignness and
see ourselves. Tonight
we make love in the barn
despite the dark, our animal
scent in the air, ears already
callousing to the growl
of planes overhead. Contrails
spike our dreams, but we vow
by day to tread a gentler and less
breathless path. We will warm
to the neighbors despite
their reminders that Herefords
are raised for slaughter. Come
spring we’ll spin our wool, bring
the neighbors fresh laid
eggs, tomatoes in the summer.
We will often be alone.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
July 2019, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, B.A. Van Sise: “Alida Rol brought a sense of visual thinking to the piece that was, as an artist, hard to pass up, building an interior world that feels palpable, rowdy to all senses: you can smell the asphalt, you can feel the dust on your fingers, you can hear the city disgorging its noise, sirens raising Cain as they bring people you don’t like to places you don’t want to be. It tells a tale we all know already—we scorn our mundane, seek out something better, something different, try to find beauty elsewhere. But it also gives the reader a lesson, surely unwanted but sorely needed: the grass isn’t always greener. In fact, the grass isn’t even green, and maybe there is, in the end, just no grass at all.”

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July 30, 2019

“Kenai” by Katherine FallonPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2019: Editor’s Choice

 

Blue Whale by Nikki Zarate

Image: “Blue Whale” by Nikki Zarate. “Kenai” was written by Katherine Fallon for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2019, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Katherine Fallon

KENAI

According to the guide, had my photos
been better, we could have identified

any of the whales as individuals by their tail
flukes. Lobed and dark as glassen water,

their under-sides were stained white with
markings peerless as our own fingerprints:

secrets they chose to tell not to us but to
the sleet, which called them up, which called

for the force of the thrust of an airplane engine
(understand: we needed something human

to understand). Knowing nothing and never
having followed anything which could be seen

from far away, difference was lost on us,
and we couldn’t stop shivering, telling ourselves

how strong we were for facing weather.
We had come so far to see them breach among

the dying glaciers, which growled like predators
before calving. The whales alone were unafraid

of the ice, though we should have understood
the violent shed as sensible, effortless, a letting go.

Toothless whales have two blowholes.
They have to think to breathe.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
June 2019, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I always love learning while reading a poem, and the biological facts here not only teach us about whales, but do a tremendous amount of metaphorical work, particularly in the last line. Add to that the music of the language throughout, and this is a thoroughly excellent poem.”

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July 25, 2019

“Ink Blots” by Matt QuinnPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2019: Artist’s Choice

 

Blue Whale by Nikki Zarate

Image: “Blue Whale” by Nikki Zarate. “Ink Blots” was written by Matt Quinn for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2019, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Matt Quinn

INK BLOTS

Perhaps because there were currents swirling
within the silence, or because a seagull
was shrieking outside the window
or in my head, or because in the end I had to

say something, I said I saw a whale.
Go on, he said. A blue whale, then, I said.
Go on, he said. And because it seemed important
to start at the beginning, I told him of a wolf

that had grown weary of the shallow
society of wolves and had left its pack and drifted
out into the deep ocean. Go on, he said,
and I told him how the salt water had held

the wolf, and how the wolf liked to float, cradled
by the blue, and how its legs transformed
into flippers and its body became huge
and blubbered against the cold, so that the wolf

floated suspended inside that giant body,
just as that body floated in the ocean,
and how the blue water stained that body blue
as if the sea were made of ink. Go on, he said.

In time, I said, it found it could no longer return
to the land, and some nights it sang songs
of its lost pack, and evermore it wandered solitary
in the great ocean. And what else? he asked.

So I told him of how once a blue whale finally
came ashore, how wounded by a harpoon
and desperate to breathe, it beached itself
near Bragar, on the small island of Lewis,

and how they had planted its jaw-bones
as an arch by the side of a road, and had hung
the harpoon from it, as a memorial, perhaps,
or perhaps as a warning. And I told him of ship-strikes,

and how easy it was to become entangled
in the debris of other people’s nets, and also of the noise
their engines make, and how finally their sonar
had drowned the last of my mourning songs.

And these smaller ink blots, he asked,
that surround the whale, what are these? Jellyfish,
I said quickly, not meeting his eye, spineless companions
of the whale, translucent blobs of floating

nothing, drifting along with it. For I knew better
than to tell this man the truth,
that the blue whale had sought refuge
in the basement-womb of the deepest blue ocean,

and that there were depth charges
exploding all around it.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
June 2019, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Nikki Zarate: “I enjoyed the back and forth conversation between the story teller and the listener. It was as if I was sitting beside a fire, being told a legend or a fairytale. The poem also did a wonderful job of connecting the sea with the land, through the whale and the wolf. It kept my interest and I wanted more and that rarely happens for me.”

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June 27, 2019

“The Optimist” by Emily SperberPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2019: Editor’s Choice

 

Desert Road by Ellen McCarthy

Image: “Desert Road” by Ellen McCarthy. “The Optimist” was written by Emily Sperber for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2019, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Emily Sperber

THE OPTIMIST

He tried to make it better
by saying at least this
was the good kind of desert,
not the bad kind and I did not
bother asking him the difference.

He tried to make it better
by saying that at least I,
his wife, didn’t have to
give the long haul trucker
a handjob for a ride to the
towing company we didn’t
even know would be there
and I didn’t want to bring up the
fact that we were still walking
and the long haul trucker was
already down the road.

He tried to make it better
by saying that the clouds
looked like cotton candy—
blue & pink puffs close
enough for the taking—
so, in his youth, he obviously
didn’t take fistfuls of the sugar
in his mouth only to throw
up in the carnival’s trash
can, those blue & pink puffs
not so puffy at the bottom
of the garbage and while
I made this distinction
apparent to him, he rolled
his eyes and twisted his
feet, in one fluid motion,
in the direction of, hopefully,
a gas station because, he said,
like a ringing bell in our
marriage, he was only
trying to make it better.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2019, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I just loved how vividly these two characters jumped out of the image and into life. It’s the precision of the details that work this magic—the carnival trash can, his full-body eye-roll. I also love that I can’t decide who to side with—neither of them, I suppose. Somehow I think they’ll make it out, though.”

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