Shopping Cart
    items

      ←

      May 30, 2024Of California, the WildBreonne Stiglitz

      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.
      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

      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.”

      →