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      October 30, 2018Katherine HuangThe Happy Meditator

      Image: “Back of the Beach” by Karen Kraco. “The Happy Meditator” was written by Katherine Huang for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2018, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
      With a leg-cross
      onto his skateboard,
      he cropped himself
       
      from the mirage.
      No longer afraid
      to be discovered
       
      by the pale
      shiny people who
      populated the beach,
       
      bleaching the oasis
      with their sunscreen,
      he became
       
      three-dimensional
      again, solid enough
      to hear the rustle
       
      of summer leaves.
      When his mother
      called, he tried
       
      to explain to her
      how he could depart
      instantly from places
       
      when they no longer
      seemed real: the city,
      the lakeside, the closeness
       
      of today, leaving behind
      not so much a shadow
      as a doorway open to
       
      interpretation.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the editor, Timothy Green

      “It’s not often that my favorite aspect of a poem is the line breaks, but that’s the case here; they’re perfect. There’s a both a tension and a touch of surprise in every new line as the poem slowly winds its way down the page, and the effect is perfectly meditative. I also loved that the poem centers around what seemed to me the most interesting detail of the photograph—the way that the figure appears physically separate from it, as if he’s practicing zazen in front of a green screen.”

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