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      August 30, 2016MemoriaMerlin Ural Rivera

      Photograph: “Trespass” by Suzanne Simmons. “Memoria” was written by Merlin Ural Rivera for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, July 2016, and selected as the Editor’s Choice winner.
      The Moskvitch left the garage twice a month.
      Grandpa would turn the wheel in white gloves
      and he would whistle a sad tune until
      we reached the mad forests of Bulgaria.
       
      The minty car stood on a small glade,
      imprisoned by pine trees, bees and yellow linnets.
      My brother looked for mushrooms
      as I lay on the grass and swilled the marrow of
      the trees, drunk on sinewy leaves.
       
      Grandpa smoked a few Rodopis to the bone
      and looked ten minutes younger
      as his worries flew off curtain by curtain.
      Branches twisted like ugly black cables and
      sieved the light that touched us as gently as a night nurse.
      We knew that this trip was not for nothing,
      that we would return to the dark garage in the city
      with a few slimy-capped mushrooms and
      ears full of crickets.
      The dead leaves stuck on the Moskvitch tires
      would bloom on the cement for two confused seconds
      and we’d know peace would elude us
      until that whistle flew high against the sky.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the editor, Timothy Green

      “Simmons’ photograph fills me with a sense of dreamy nostalgia, but it was a disembodied nostalgia, until I read this poem, which finally gave that feeling a home. I loved the ease of the voice and the vivid details, especially Grandpa smoking himself ‘ten minutes younger.’ It’s a delightful poem, worthy of the photograph.”

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