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      July 25, 2023Girl Is Glued to DoorWilliam Ross

      Image: “Untold Stories” by Judith Fox. “Girl is Glued to Door” was written by William Ross for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
      There are things I still don’t understand
      about you. Your mouth would tell me,
      but there has been a violence, your
      voice punched away for being
      in the wrong place, a darkness thrown
       
      in spatters and now your face. Like a
      wanted poster, you stare out, hair swept
      back so you see clearly,
      confronting the world head-on. Are you
      followed? Are you hunted?
       
      I’ve been combing dispatches,
      the cryptic signals you send:
       
      the flannel shirt, choice of lumberjacks
      and grunge musicians, plaid considered
      dangerous in some circles;
      the skull pendant on a string.
       
      And messages from a hunter of images,
      ones you did not intend:
       
      the fierce defiance of an armoured door,
      blunt violence of a ragged hole
      blasted through your likeness,
      a documentary record torn open, raw
       
      threshold revealed. The voice shouting:
      Entry is Trespass.
       

      —from Ekphrastic Challenge
      June 2023, Artist’s Choice

      __________

      Comment from the artist, Judith Fox: “The poem I selected for the June Ekphrastic Challenge is the well-crafted and insightful ‘Girl is Glued to Door.’ It wasn’t an easy choice, there were numerous beautiful and intelligent entries, but the poem skillfully echoes and expands on the mysteries and tensions in the poster I photographed; in its placement over a shocking red lock and useless door. The poem opens with a simple and engaging observation: ‘There are things I still don’t understand about you’ and continues with thoughtful questions of the subject: ‘Are you Followed? Are you hunted?’ and observations: ‘the cryptic signals you send.’ The powerful final line particularly resonated with me: ‘The voice shouting: Entry is Trespass.'”

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the artist, Judith Fox

      “The poem I selected for the June Ekphrastic Challenge is the well-crafted and insightful ‘Girl is Glued to Door.’ It wasn’t an easy choice, there were numerous beautiful and intelligent entries, but the poem skillfully echoes and expands on the mysteries and tensions in the poster I photographed; in its placement over a shocking red lock and useless door. The poem opens with a simple and engaging observation: ‘There are things I still don’t understand about you’ and continues with thoughtful questions of the subject: ‘Are you Followed? Are you hunted?’ and observations: ‘the cryptic signals you send.’ The powerful final line particularly resonated with me: ‘The voice shouting: Entry is Trespass.’”

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