Ekphrasis

June 27, 2024

“An Early Autumn Light that Unburies You” by Steven PanPosted by

Bird Ascending the Fire by Barbara Hageman Sarvis, painting in oranges and purples of a bird flying over a woodland lake

Image: “Bird Ascending the Fire” by Barbara Hageman Sarvis. “An Early Autumn Light that Unburies You” was written by Steven Pan for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

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Steven Pan

AN EARLY AUTUMN LIGHT THAT UNBURIES YOU

On earth, everything no longer
here is here in some variation
 
of light. An ice age
half-gone, all geography
 
shaved off youngest to oldest:
craters and lakes telling time
 
in reverse. Someday we’ll end
up there, you used to say,
 
pointing to the sun setting
over the strand. The season
 
and the leaves, starting
over again in a dream
 
with everything that lived
before this. Is it strange,
 
how a hurt that looked back
at you, looks like all of you
 
in the amber slowness
before evening. The detour
 
of your shadow
somewhere, casting a hook
 
over the water, perception
as imprecise as memory
 
or the autumn lingering
inside of it. Any year
 
straying no further
than the line of a robin’s
 
wings, the slight lean
of the trees that said life
 
held on. If I could call
you back, would this shore
 
be the one you’d wait on? How often
I mistake the sound of the wind
 
for the sound of your answer.
Your answer for a goodbye said
 
aloud. Goodbye for a matter
of time, or maybe a matter
 
of timing. Like a bird caught
mid-flight in the light
 
of the sky, brimming with everything
and nothing at once.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2024, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the editor, Megan O’Reilly: “There are many aspects of ‘An Early Autumn Light that Unburies You’ that left an impression, from its smooth flow and musicality to its depth of meaning, but what stands out most, perhaps, is the way it’s peppered with gorgeous and brilliant turns of phrase–so many the effect could be overwhelming in the hands of a less adept poet. In the very same sentence, we find ‘The detour / of your shadow,’ ‘perception / as imprecise as memory’ (a stunningly insightful description), and ‘the autumn lingering / inside of it.’ One could read these lines many times and still be taken by the beauty and profundity of the poet’s language. When I first saw this image, I thought such a dramatic and striking piece of art would be challenging to match. I can’t imagine a better partner than this poem.”

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June 20, 2024

“Wildfire Dreams” by Linda Vandlac SmithPosted by

Bird Ascending the Fire by Barbara Hageman Sarvis, painting in oranges and purples of a bird flying over a woodland lake

Image: “Bird Ascending the Fire” by Barbara Hageman Sarvis. “Wildfire Dreams” was written by Linda Vandlac Smith for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Linda Vandlac Smith

WILDFIRE DREAMS

at night sleep slides
its matchbox open
sparks old torches
a woodland of flares
twizzling up through
brittle boughs of
dream all wick from
roots to treetops
 
everywhere lake
laps heat’s edge at
the border of what is
and isn’t afire what is
wind or what creates
it as smoke makes its
lateral move through
curve of vision nearly
 
obfuscates a bird risen
from shadow’s char
not phoenix but drone
misshapen angel or
ancestor I cry out for
any stranger born into
a wildfire of dreams
only a distortion of
 
myself parting troubled
clouds making orange
apologies from within
the same dark scowl
that ignites thunderstorm
this incubator of flame
that renews forest
with one jagged strike
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
May 2024, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Barbara Hageman Sarvis: “I loved the poems very much, but felt that the poet of ‘Wildfire Dreams’ did an excellent job creating words, metaphors, and a narrative that describe both literally and emotionally the visual imagery in my painting.”

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May 30, 2024

“Of California, the Wild” by Breonne StiglitzPosted by

Night Train by Gerrie Paino, train car deserted at night with stars in background

Image: “Night Train” by Gerrie Paino. “Of California, the Wild” was written by Breonne Stiglitz for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Breonne Stiglitz

OF CALIFORNIA, THE WILD

There, on a midnight railway,
beyond the static
of the locusts,
a small, broken hum
from an old radio
blinks in and out,
in and out,
through Cuyahoga Valley
when Ohio was for lovers.
A golden sepia-toned starlet
leans on the glass
of the window
and wonders
as the steam blows
from the engine ahead.
A man in a frock coat
and a three-piece suit
tips his hat
as her wonder floats
into the aisle
where it collides
with his glistening glare.
Her rosy, peach cheeks pull
her mouth to her ears,
and she can hear
the distant voices
of California, the wild
calling her name. There,
where the cars drive
faster, the trees turn
to telephone poles,
and the lights burn
an afterimage
into the eyes of twilight—
puddles spilt
in the street, reflecting
the stoplights, the theater,
the neon signs
that curl fingers inwards
to lift skirts and seduce
prey, to convince onlookers
to buy lipstick and pearls
that bleed and coil
like snakes around the necks
of the Beautiful
and the Enlightened.
And it pulls like a venom,
pulsing,
a steam engine traveling
across the skin
of a Hollywood dream,
where it once whistled
like a biting catcall,
that now, sits amongst
the brush and thistle
to shelter the rabbits
from the foxes’ mouths,
an orchestra of crickets—
the sounds of the night
begging
the locomotive to move
again under God’s collection
of dying stars, wheels
that once turned as time does.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2024, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “There is a dreamy, cinematic quality to this image that I felt was perfectly captured by ‘Of California, the Wild.’ I found it effortless and satisfying to imagine this ‘golden sepia-toned starlet’ looking out the train window until the natural landscape fades and ‘the trees turn / to telephone poles.’ There is magic in the way the poet contrasts the glamour and glitz of Hollywood (“the neon signs/that curl fingers inwards”) against the still-wild California land. The poem ends with a haunting reminder that the train is an agent of time–once relentless and vibrant; now frozen, just a memory.”

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May 23, 2024

“Tracks” by Matthew MurreyPosted by

Night Train by Gerrie Paino, train car deserted at night with stars in background

Image: “Night Train” by Gerrie Paino. “Tracks” was written by Matthew Murrey for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Matthew Murrey

TRACKS

after Tomas Tranströmer

It is the last night—
stars, moonlight, thin clouds—
and I am sad nothing
remains but the baggage car
 
where I packed myself
still crying and holding on
to my mother’s soft skirt
the second day of school,
 
where I stowed my sister and I
watching a black and white
movie on TV until our father
says “Turn that off.”
 
My first time seeing you
is in there, along with a pair
of shoes, a funeral, a bed
on the floor, and two horizons.
 
What a noon it was when
the whole train was on its way
across rivers and fields heading
toward mountains and the sea.
 
I was looking forward to far
more, but this will have to do:
bright moonlight, leafless trees,
stars forever out of reach.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
April 2024, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, Gerrie Paino: “The evening I came upon the solitary train car that is the subject of my Ekphrastic Challenge photograph, I felt a sense of fascination and mystery. What stories would that deteriorating hulk tell, should it be given a voice? The opportunity to have so many talented poets share their answers was both a delight and a challenge, but, ultimately, I kept returning to ‘Tracks,’ as the one that felt absolutely right. ‘It is the last night,’ begins this poem, begging the question, ‘Last night for what?’ From that point on, we are offered deftly-rendered fragments of memory which include a ‘mother’s soft skirt’ being clutched by a child afraid to go to school, a gruff father, and, most striking to me, ‘… a pair / of shoes, a funeral, a bed / on the floor, and two horizons.’ The final stanza, with its sense of longing and resignation, seems to summarize everything that might be contained in that deteriorating behemoth as it crumbles, inexorably, beneath ‘stars forever out of reach.’”

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April 30, 2024

“Synapses and Stardust” by Brandy NorrbomPosted by

Alignment II by John Paul Caponigro, surreal photograph of boulders over a sand dune

Image: “Alignment II” by John Paul Caponigro. “Synapses and Stardust” was written by Brandy Norrbom for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Brandy Norrbom

SYNAPSES AND STARDUST

Six times you were cosmic dust in the universe
But this time you called me sanctuary running
Lines through the sand like bio-electricity the
Spaces between us humming like synapses you
Set us apart like monoliths in the desert sky all
Scratching shadows where the dark in me is
Pulling every state of was or being into the
Undertow of this magnetic rift and yes it’s
Polarized but so are the tides and the moon
Making us as orbital as all that other matter
Can we fold into and around each other a
Tesseract through time where every instance
Of you finds every instance of me?
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2024, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “I love the idea of the ‘spaces between us humming like synapses,’ and the way one can almost sense that kind of electricity between the objects in this image. The thoughtful lack of punctuation makes the poem flow as if it’s all being said in one breath, which reflects the ‘suspended in space and time’ feeling of the artwork. The last two lines are beautiful and moving, and take the reader by surprise with their candid vulnerability. The ending seems to hang in the air after the poem is over, again perfectly mirroring the scene in the image.”

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April 25, 2024

“The Space Between” by Amelie FlaglerPosted by

Alignment II by John Paul Caponigro, surreal photograph of boulders over a sand dune

Image: “Alignment II” by John Paul Caponigro. “The Space Between” was written by Amelie Flagler for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Amelie Flagler

THE SPACE BETWEEN

Perhaps equidistance is a secret to be explored.
I suggest it’s not something,
I believe it’s not nothing,
But a perfect illusion of what comes in between.
The things that we miss at the height of a scene.
Not as grand as the sky, or as low as the sands,
The air that’s unnoticed as it flows through the lands,
The blank space.
The missed place.
The dirt between home and first base.
 
So the zone between up and down lies still,
Forever ignored by the human’s will,
Floating and frozen, barely windblown,
Unmoving, unrecognized, encaptured in stone.
 
We continue our lives, always looking around,
Condoning our nature to miss middle-ground.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2024, Artist’s Choice

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Comment from the artist, John Paul Caponigro: “‘The Space Between’ engages the art directly, transcending mere description, surprisingly and insightfully noting what often goes unnoticed. Never departing from the original source, the observations it shares feel both personal and universal, reminding us of truths we already know but often forget. I feel I learned something while reading this poem written in response to my art; something that was intuitively felt became consciously clearer.”

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March 28, 2024

“Shoulder MRI” by Elizabeth McMunn-TetangcoPosted by

Graphing Uncertainty V by Christine Crockett, abstract painting of lines and triangles in red and black

Image: “Graphing Uncertainty V” by Christine Crockett. “Shoulder MRI” was written by Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2024, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)

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Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco

SHOULDER MRI

It doesn’t hurt it is
abstract.
 
The pain
is toothaches, but
 
displaced.
A refugee. There is
 
a word.
It’s like a hammer
 
and a nail, how everything
 
becomes your
pain. It sleeps and wakes.
 
It wakes you up. It goes all
 
egg-shaped, tastes
of blood. You
 
picture pain
in little threads, tender
 
as clams. Papier maché. You see
 
the torn part. No
 
one knows that it is there. It hates
this too.
 

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
February 2024, Editor’s Choice

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Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “Even the title of this poem alone seems to me to resonate with the enigmatically compelling image—the abstract, angular, black-and-white tone reminiscent of an MRI scan. As the piece unfolds, I see an even stronger connection between the two: There’s an objectivity, a detachment, to the way the speaker describes pain, and yet also a vulnerable rawness that comes through, a contrast that reflects the distinction between the black-and-white angularity and the rounded red shape in the center. I love the way the poet writes in mostly clipped, staccato phrases—‘A refugee. There is / a word. / It’s like a hammer’–that don’t bely any feeling, and then the last line is the first time emotion is explicitly introduced, a surprising ending that renders the poem suddenly personal. In image and words alike, there is a beating heart under all this abstraction.”

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