Ekphrastic Poems Part 2
Photo: “Invincible” by Linda Panas
Two poems by Barbara Crooker based on the above photograph.
“INVINCIBLE”
after a photograph by Lydia Panas
So, you want to take my picture? I don’t care. I’m here with my cousins; Jessie in the center is the one you focus on, Natalie and Amber on either side. They’re perfect and they know it, skinny as the trees behind us, faces smooth as the pond beyond. I’m the one you don’t notice, in the left of the frame, the one with the glasses, a little out of focus. The camera cuts me off the way these girls edge me out, the way they close their circle without me. Sure, they’re older, have boyfriends, drive cars. I’m in their shadow, the penumbra of their moony light. The silver teeth of Jessie’s zipper, a train track straight out of town.
after “Invincible,” a photograph by Lydia Panas
“The body is the harp of the soul.” Body World
Do you think you know me? I’m standing
here with my sister and two cousins; you think
we’re alike because we wear the same clothes,
black hoodies, tank tops, jeans. You have no
idea, can’t imagine the muscles of my heart,
see the fear pumping. You think my smooth
skin, straight hair is a road map, a ticket to ride
right out of this town. You think I’m tough
enough for anything. But you don’t feel
my pulse jumping like a cricket, the way
all these choices are making me crazy: which
college? which major? which boy? On
my sweatshirt, there’s a zipper, its teeth
like the cuts I make on my upper arm,
my inner thigh. I don’t know where I’m going,
but I know I want to be gone. Do you think
you can catch me in your camera? I am butter
in a hot skillet, April snow, water in a stream;
I am gone.
published in Adana, 2012
COUPLE D’AMOUREUX DANS UN PETIT CAFÉ, QUARTIER ITALIE by Barbara Crooker
Brassai, gelatin silver print, 1932
This could have been us, maybe seventy years later,
on one of our trips to the City of Light. First you’d
wrestle with the top brass over the R&D budget
while I shopped and went to museums; then,
when the business stress was over, it was just
the two of us, no worries about my mother,
our son with autism, just us, a small brasserie,
the May air, the blossoming trees. Even the smoke
from nearby Gitanes, part of the ambiance. I loved
the way coffee in France came avec son chocolat,
“with his chocolate,” that sense of belonging.
The couple in this photograph are just about
to kiss. We never see the next moment, when
the baiser happens. Or maybe it doesn’t—maybe
it’s a contrivance, a pose for the camera’s eye.
It doesn’t matter now. But if it had been us,
oh, yes, we always followed through.
published in The MacGuffin, 2023
Elliot Erwitt Loved Dogs, Evidently by Shaun R. Pankoski
Maybe even more than people.
In fact, probably so. He said
they were like humans with more hair.
Filled eight books with photos of them.
'Felix, Gladys and Rover' is my favorite―
a black and white image taken in NYC
the year I was a high school freshman―
the woman's booted legs flanked
on one side by remarkably similar
Great Dane legs, on the other,
by a tiny Chihuahua in a jaunty
knitted cap. Probably Rover.
Or, at least, I hope so.
He had four wives, six children,
died in his sleep at ninety-five,
and spoke four languages.
Five, if you count the language
of image.
Lament for a Light Horseman.by Neil Creighton
-for my father, Reg Creighton, 1913-1981.
How young and dashing you are.
You wear your emu-plumed Light Horseman’s hat.
Your face, in profile, is full of hope.
A little smile flickers on your lips.
Bright confidence covers your face.
You hold her by the bridle throatlatch.
Her mixture of fear and curiosity amuses you.
Her ears are forward. Her eyes stare.
What is it that you whisper?
Don’t worry, Pol, it’s only a camera.
Click! And there you are, for that moment
always young, happy and idealistic.
Perhaps you were just twenty two.
That was before your marriage,
before you left for war,
before you left behind your pregnant wife,
before, night after night,
17,000 kilometres from home
you spent the years of what remained
of your young life in the danger and cold
of a canvas-covered aircraft,
protecting Allied shipping lanes
and searching for U-boats,
first skimming low over the blue Mediterranean
and then later the great dark cold North Sea,
unwaveringly following your conscience,
surviving who knows what
to finally come home
when you were just thirty three.
I wish I could write a happy ending for you,
one like those Westerns you so loved,
have your horse, Polybon, waiting for you,
have you hero-like swing into the saddle,
lift your bride up behind you,
and whilst the credits roll
turn away from the camera and canter
towards family and contentment
in those distant blue mountains.
But that is not your story.
After eighteen happy and generous years
when your family grew and you rebuilt your life,
you became sick, your lungs shrunk,
your evenings were destroyed with coughing
and a desperate struggle for air.
You said it was chronic illness from the War.
You said it was from flying in the freezing night.
Eventually a reluctant government agreed.
You were only fifty one.
And I must write of your last seventeen years
when something dark and terrible
and utterly beyond your control
emerged to periodically overpower
who I think you wanted to be.
What caused that unhappiness?
Dormant darkness belatedly emerging from the war?
A side effect from all that medication?
Or something always in you,
a human flaw hidden by youth
and emerging with age and hard experience
to periodically flame and rage?
And when the fire passed,
did you even remember
who you had momentarily been?
If I could, I would wash away those last years,
fetch from a deep well water of such sweetness
as to soothe and heal all the mind’s wounds.
What is it that you wanted?
You were too edgy for mere contentment.
I know you desired esteem and recognition
and I have seen in that portrait
both the young man you once were
and the person you wanted to be.
The teenage me, confused and oppressed
by the ferocity of your change,
had to reject the external mania.
Now, if I could, I would tell you
that these older eyes
have searched your deep core
to seek what lay hidden behind
trauma, temper, days and weeks
of interminable conflict and rage,
mere externals the years are washing away
to reveal a complex and good man trapped
by something vastly beyond his control.
You did not live a long life.
Your heart gave out.
We gathered around you in the hospital,
your wife and four of your five children.
For more than a week you lingered,
gaining comfort from our presence.
Then you fell into unconsciousness
and the green monitor flat-lined.
He’s gone, I said.
He’s not, she said, in momentary disbelief.
Then briefly and tenderly she touched you,
forehead to forehead, before,
emotionally exhausted, we left together
in strange mixture of grief and relief.
You were not quite sixty eight.
First published at Verse Virtual.
Painting by Louis Mattis, father, of Shoshauna Shy
HOW YOU LIVE ON by Shoshauna Shy
----- For my father 1926-2017
The painting of a blue
1950s Chevy pickup
between a pinyon pine
and an abandoned shed
under a New Mexican sky
mounted above a mantelpiece
in a Midwestern town
reminds me of your oil paintings
and I nearly grab my phone
to text you a snap of it
as if you were in Santa Fe–
bearded, bereted in your
brown suéde shoes walking
to the brokerage on Marcy Street–
till I remember you died
six summers ago
first published in Creative Wisconsin
On the lower sheet, the left-most image was printed
upside down. River II preserves this accidental reflection.
—Ellsworth Kelly
An accident, was it? Reflections often are
precisely that: little glints of clarity
in a wash of ruffled chaos—like a star
winking and sputtering unimpressively
behind the curtain of competing light
that we call ambient. And this is how
you realized a way to recreate
the chronicles of rivers: upside down,
purling backward, puckering a skein
of water with your brushes, showing where
a wrinkle on the surface might explain
the rocks below. But only here and there—
reflecting, in your enigmatic way,
what rivers might or might not have to say.
ESPERANZA
—based on a sculpture by
Fernando Calvo
There you sit, viejita
on a canvas chair
Your back your twin pigtails straight
in anticipation
A shawl drapes over rounded shoulders
You cross your varicose-veined legs
at the ankles
Bare feet thickened by the decades
planted on this earth
working in the fields
walking through a lifetime
of dusty dry seasons
& muddy rainy seasons
caring for a lost husband
standing in the river
scrubbing clothes on rocks
with those now-arthritis-gnarled hands
that rest upon your knees
One index finger raised a bit
as if ready to beckon
Your arms thinned to skin & fragile bone
Breasts sag with your age
You wait with a resolute
frown falling away
in wrinkles
Gaze focused firm across this gallery
You sit silent, hard
frozen in a pose
greened with the years
of your patience
Waiting
Waiting for what?
Waiting perhaps for the postman to come
bearing a letter, some money
from your son emigrated
to the Great North
Waiting for your nietos to gather ‘round
& hear the history you have witnessed
Waiting for the sun to rise or to set
another day of life, gracias a dios
Waiting, viejita, in bronze time
for your inevitable death
to arrive
Based on the painting of the same name by Edgar Degas
Pardon, Madame?
Are you talking to me?
My name?
It is Ellen Andrée.
How old am I?
I am 19.
Ellen looks down at her glass
of the cloudy green liqueur
one gloved finger delicately
wipes away a bead of sweat
from the goblet
My dreams, Madame?
Je voudrais … I would like
to be actress.
But it is très difficile.
The men only want …
You know, they think
that an actress should …
But no – I am not that type
of woman. Je voudrais, I want
to be a serious actress.
And so to pass these days,
these weeks, these months
without roles, I pose for artists
and spend the evenings here
losing myself …
She takes a small sip of absinthe
letting the thick wormwood drink
trickle over her gums, the anise
flavor slightly stinging her throat
For whom do I pose, Madame?
Alors, for Monsieur Édouard Manet,
et Monsieur Edgar Degas et le
Monsieur Pierre-Auguste Renoir …
Oui, c’est moi in that painting
by Monsieur Degas – L'Absinthe
He painted it right here, in this very
café, I seated in this very same table.
Madame, why do you ask
me these questions? Who
are you?
Pardon?
I shall be a fine actress, vraiment?
I will live many years?
Ellen gazes into the light-green
and ivory clouds swirling through
the absinthe.
Madame?
Her clouded eyes widen
to the empty space before her.
Madame?
Où êtes-vous, Madame?
Thank you for theses fine poems. They add dimension to the pictures.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Sharon, for including my ekphrastic poem. It's lovely to be in such stellar company!
ReplyDelete