Ekphrasis

August 31, 2017

“After Cleaning the Kitchen Again, He Realizes” by Rosemerry Wahtola TrommerPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2017: Editor’s Choice

 

Portrait of a Kitchen by Samantha Gee

Image: “Portrait of a Kitchen” by Samantha Gee. “After Cleaning the Kitchen Again, He Realizes” was written by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2017, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

AFTER CLEANING THE KITCHEN AGAIN, HE REALIZES

Don’t look in the sink for happiness.
It sounds so obvious. But even the shiniest,
cleanest sink is still only a sink.
Don’t look in the cupboards.
Don’t look in the fridge. Don’t look
to the tile floor—though this
is a place we’ve danced before.
Even the stovetop, the home of flame
and chemical change—the burners
are not what we seek. Of course
we look to the kitchen. The center
of everything. Don’t look out
the open window. Don’t expect
from the empty green vase.
The only thing that’s ever mattered
were the lovers in this space.
No matter how clean the counters.
No matter how soft the breeze.
It’s us, my love, it’s us that’s missing.
It’s us that we most need.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2017
Editor’s Choice

[download audio]

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green, on this selection: “Samantha Gee’s painting generated a wide range of responses—some saw nostalgic breakfasts, others saw the loneliness of retirement, and many saw ghosts, which was surprising, because I don’t see ghosts at all. Very few of the 300 entries were love poems, though. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer hooked me with that first line, which does indeed ‘sound so obvious’—so simple and wise that I think I must have read it before, but it turns out no one has. Lines like that are rare, as are fresh and authentic love poems like these. It fit the painting, and lifted my spirits, frankly. I hope it lifts yours, too.”

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August 24, 2017

“My First Body Is Beautiful Until” by Reese ConnerPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2017: Artist’s Choice

 

Portrait of a Kitchen by Samantha Gee

Image: “Portrait of a Kitchen” by Samantha Gee. “My First Body Is Beautiful Until” was written by Reese Conner for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2017, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Reese Conner

MY FIRST BODY IS BEAUTIFUL UNTIL

On the kitchen floor, years ago,
peeled potatoes roll, slippery
as skulls—all the ugliness
sticks to their wet flesh and
it’s hard not to see analogy in that.

I tickle static into my first body—
it rises brightly, rises from the kitchen
and begins to tend to half-crescent stains
on counters, to supper dishes in the sink,
to routines necessary even in nostalgia.

I begin making mashed potatoes. I start
by peeling, scalping with a knife.
It’s fun to see how perfectly round
I can make them. They feel so slick
to shift in my hand. My first body
is a celebration of touch because
my first body has no reflection—
it has not been urged to see one yet.

It is my birthday and I am about
to try on a new pair of checkered
pink pants. But they don’t fit.
My hips are too wide now
and I trip trying to squirm in.
The thud calls my grandmother,
who comes expecting something
broken, but finds, instead,
my first body for the last time
and offers it its first reflection:
And aren’t you chunky.

All this while, the ancient skulls hide
beneath the refrigerator. I left them there
because they were broken
the moment they kissed earth. Like
all disappointments, they deserved
a hiding place, so I nudged them.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2017
Artist’s Choice

[download audio]

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Comment from the artist, Samantha Gee, on this selection: “I was struck by the delightfully macabre imagery as well as the disconnect of the narrator’s existence in the temporary body. A lot of the poems I read made reference to the faded figure in the center of the painting as a ghost and faded memories; I thoroughly enjoyed how this poem puts the reader in the figure’s shoes as they take their first curious steps.”

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July 27, 2017

“A Thousand Possible Clouds” by Valentina GnupPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2017: Editor’s Choice

 

No Name #2 by Ryan Schaufler

Image: “No Name #2” by Ryan Schaufler. “A Thousand Possible Clouds” was written by Valentina Gnup for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2017, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Valentina Gnup

A THOUSAND POSSIBLE CLOUDS

Go find a pencil
the world is a terrible first draft.

When you write a story, you have choices—
horizon, chickweed, loneliness,

a copse of trees harbors soldiers
stealthily as a virus invades a body

or holds redwoods, gentle as grandparents,
collecting their centuries in a map of pale rings.

Listen, a foghorn beyond the fields
moans like an animal suffering

the sky has surrendered its hours
or exploded into a thousand possible clouds.

The children on the road far behind you
have lost their parents, their country—

someone got too greedy
someone believed he knew what was right.

Or they’re your children on that road
carrying home blackberries to make cobbler—

cut the butter into the flour, stop to kiss
the swirled crowns of their heads.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2017
Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green, on this selection: “This amazing poem by Valentina Gnup seems to describe the mood of the painting by naming only what isn’t contained within it—all the things off-frame that we aren’t able to see. The best ekphrastic poems often operate tangentially, after a leap of separation from the visual content that creates the same effect as the cut that bridges disparate parts of a haiku: the poem is both completely a part of the painting and completely not. Gnup crafts this special kind of schism perfectly. I’m sure the children are there on the road, just off-frame, right next to the cow that sounds like a foghorn. What’s more, I read this on the 4th of July, and somehow, almost magically, all of Summer 2017 America is contained in the painting, too.” (website)

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July 20, 2017

“Blue Rain Clouds, Reddish Ground, and Tall Crosses” by Jose Rizal ReyesPosted by

No Name #2 by Ryan Schaufler

Image: “No Name #2” by Ryan Schaufler. “Blue Rain Clouds, Reddish Ground and Tall Crosses” was written by Jose Rizal Reyes for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2017, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Jose Rizal Reyes

BLUE RAIN CLOUDS, REDDISH GROUND, AND TALL CROSSES

The sky has gotten heavy with the rain
that’s started to unleash upon the ground.
Electric posts remind us of the slain
including someone who with thorns was crowned.

We’ve traveled far into this world of form;
our multicolored journey moves along.
The clouds and ground magically transform
to blue and red be it so right or wrong.

Where leads this road that doesn’t seem to end?
Or is our destination getting close?
What tinted view awaits beyond the bend?
I don’t know nor know anyone who knows.

But like a trip, to appreciate an art,
there must be somewhere where we ought to start.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2017
Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Ryan Schaufler, on this selection: “Several themes appeared throughout the collection of poems: feelings of loss, searching for purpose, remembrance of personal past and/or historical memories, spiritual confusion/search, spiritual experience found in the open road and expanse of land, fear of political/environmental/cultural changes, fear of the open road (where to start, where does it end, what’s next?). I was touched by ‘Blue Rain Clouds, Reddish Ground and Tall Crosses’ by Jose Rizal Reyes. He approaches the image from a somewhat different point-of-view than myself, yet intersects similar thoughts that I have when traveling across America, and how I felt when I took the original picture. I appreciated the simplicity of his well-structured sonnet and the subtle complexity that expressed the multitudinous colors that paint the traveler’s mind when confronted with endless road, expansive landscape, and the deteriorating structures of its past (man-made or otherwise). It was one of the more literal interpretations, while extending both somber and playful tones of heart and musicality. Whether one is traveling through the farmlands of the Midwest, the sacred Badlands, the dry deserts of the Southwest, epic towers of the Rocky Mountains, or the rolling hills of the Appalachian Trail, there is an unquestionable sense of spiritual connection that has been conveyed by countless people and cultures since man took their first step upon this continent. Mr. Reyes provides haunting dynamics that are now complicating these lands with centuries of historical and spiritual trauma that we, as American’s, often refuse to confront. In addition, there is an unavoidable clash of spiritual and political when traveling through America which he touches upon (perhaps, unintentionally) with the reference of ‘blue and red be it so right or wrong.’ This embattled merging often muddies the purity of the experience and sends the mind swirling into a frenzy of questions, fears, and memories. Reyes reminds us of the importance to ask questions and challenge, not only what we see, but what we know (or think we know). Finally, he leads us to that frightening truth that every journey requires us to ‘start’ the process, which, to me, means if we focus on worrying about the length of the road or what will greet us at the end, we may never begin our travels. In other words, we will be stuck watching and wondering and never truly experiencing what life, art, nature, and humanity has to offer. It is simple questions filled with extraordinary answers only found by confronting the road in front of us. This is why I felt a deep and humbling connection to this particular poem and the image with no name.”

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June 29, 2017

“She Tells Him of Her Fears” by Priyam Goswami ChoudhuryPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2017: Editor’s Choice

 

The Pink Bird Corridor by Soren James

Image: “The Pink Bird Corridor” by Soren James. “She Tells Him of Her Fears” was written by Priyam Goswami Choudhury for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2017, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Priyam Goswami Choudhury

SHE TELLS HIM OF HER FEARS

imagine
this w_rld as y_u kn_w it
g_ne;

n_t because _f itself
but
y_ur _wn h_ll_wness—

a faculty _f y_ur existence
pl_tzlich
disappeared

the _rder _f things
as y_u kn_w it
bec_mes a semblance

_f what it is n_t;
like an empty carcass
at the Smiths_nian;

the pe_ple peering in
are actually peering
thru

—Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2017
Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green, on this selection: “To be honest, I find this poem perplexing, and I’m not exactly sure why I love it any more than I understand why it’s the letter O that is missing from the text. With its vivid, dreamlike strangeness, though, it fits the image perfectly. Both the photograph and the poem are oddities—artifacts to peer through and contemplate, that are also clearly and vividly rendered.”

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June 22, 2017

“Birds of a Feather” by Lianne KampPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2017: Artist’s Choice

 

And the Wolf by Laura Jensen

Image: “The Pink Bird Corridor” by Soren James. “Birds of a Feather” was written by Lianne Kamp for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2017, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Lianne Kamp

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

And this, my friend,
is how the end is
determined to find us—

after eons of evolution,
after miraculous miles
of twisting DNA,

trailing through the
telescopic corridors
and the electric synopsis—

to be pared down
to the bare bones,
to be stripped of

all our trappings
like so many proud
peacocks unaware

that their plumage
has fallen away

—Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2017
Artist’s Choice

[download audio]

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Comment from the artist, Soren James, on this selection: “From a wonderfully diverse collection of poems, I’ve chosen one that I found perhaps the most concise—its pared style echoing its meaning. Philosophically rich, the poem covers a surprising amount of ground—from genial opening to abstract comment on everything—in less than a hundred words. Loved it.”

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May 30, 2017

“Coyote” by Suzanne LangloisPosted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2017: Editor’s Choice

 

And the Wolf by Laura Jensen

Image: “And the Wolf” by Laura Jensen. “Coyote” was written by Suzanne Langlois for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2017, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

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Suzanne Langlois

COYOTE

In the dreams, I look down
at my arms and they are legs.
I do not wear clothing,
but I am not naked.
My mouth opens nearly
from ear to ear and contains
no words. In the dreams,
I don’t need words in my mouth
—my teeth are sharp enough
to speak for themselves,
to take what they want
without asking.

In a den somewhere a creature
sleeps and dreams her body bald.
She howls in terror and strange
sounds come from her throat—
they sound like my god
why have you forsaken me?
She rises to join her people
but they back away snarling
and then turn and run.
She tries to run with them
but they disappear into the trees
and she can not catch
their scent. Her nose is deaf.

In the dreams, I leave
my bedroom through
the claw-torn screen.
I follow an anguished cry
I can hear with my nose.
It leads me to a den where
a naked woman rocks
on her haunches and howls
her aloneness. Her eyes
are wild but her body is not.
It is a trap she will die in.

The dream always ends
the same way—I wake
just as a bullet opens the body
I was wearing a moment ago.
Always, it takes a long moment
before I can move my limbs,
which are numb and stiff,
as though they belonged
to someone else. Always,
I am unable to make a sound
until I do, and then it is
never the sound I expected.

—Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2017
Editor’s Choice

[download audio]

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Comment from the editor, Timothy Green, on this selection: “It was the powerful ambiguity of the last lines that sealed it for me, but the poem overall tells a rich and surreal story in very few words, keeping us always slightly off-balance, as the best speculative poetry often does. Who is really dreaming who? This haunting painting deserved a haunting poem.”

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