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      July 25, 2019Ink BlotsMatt Quinn

      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.
      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

      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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