“Supernatural” by Laura Theis

April 22, 2021Posted by

Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2021: Artist’s Choice

 

Into Thee by Susy Kamber, collage of a red dress seeming to materialize from nowhere

Image: “Into Thee” by Susy Kamber. “Supernatural” was written by Laura Theis for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

[download: PDF / JPG]

__________

Laura Theis

SUPERNATURAL

mist is water

without surface

and yet it will not

 

only swallow the past but

bring it up again too

if it feels in the mood

 

let me tell you how

it steps through the vapour

towards you now

 

not like a twin trapped

in a mirror reaching both hands

towards you through the glass

 

or a pinniped

coming up for air

from the unsounded deep

 

not like a sleeper breaking

through a dream’s stillness

into the clang and dry of the waking

 

no it emerges

composed and unhurried

moving backwards like a riddle

 

a girl wearing not so much

a dress as a violent

blaze of chenille

 

determined to make you

say that you now

believe in ghosts

—from Ekphrastic Challenge
March 2021, Artist’s Choice

__________

Comment from the artist, Susy Kamber: “I love the intent of the meaning of your poetic response. For me it describes determination. In this instance a belief in ghosts. How does a belief in anything occur? The description paints this ghost-like appearance powerfully enough for me, in such descriptive words, that in the end I might also begin to wonder. Ghosts playing words into a determined desire to have you in their field and maybe that’s something only ghosts can do.”

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