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      March 31, 2016In the Museum of Cold IdeasGinny Lowe Connors

      Photograph: “Met” by Dave Thewlis. “In the Museum of Cold Ideas” was written by Ginny Lowe Connors for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2016, and selected by Timothy Green as the Editor’s Choice winner.
      We were feeling very black and white,
      very automatic. Our fingernails
      were letting go, our eyelashes,
      the lobes of our ears. Invisibility
      drifted over us like fine gray soot.
       
      We could almost remember the colors of snow—
      shadows, wind, diamonds catching light,
      colors whirling and sharp. Then softly sighing.
      We felt them pressing behind our eyes,
      but couldn’t quite …
       
      What do you call them? They are—where?
      In the museum of cold ideas
      we went up and down stairs, looking
      for the Winter Room. Found instead a bench
      where we sat with silhouettes.
       
      Is it possible to dream in black and white?
      Boxes bisected air. Squares skinned the building
      and rose up from a shallow rectangle,
      the reflecting pool. We just sat there for a while
      with the others, reflecting, surrounded
       
      by rows of rectangles. A tracery of cold air on some,
      sparkle of lost coins just beneath others. Boxes
      yearned toward us in their not quite perfect rows.
      This is where feelings are stored now,
      in fretworks of frames all the same size.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the editor

      “From a beautifully composed, but also earthly and human photograph, Ginny Lowe Connors builds an otherworldly science fiction realm, one that grips and unsettles from the first line. Dave Thewlis’s photograph, for me, conjured a feeling of journey and connection, so it was shocking to see a poem create the oppose, a sense of isolation and disconnect. It’s also just a well-written and imaginative poem, on top of that.”

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