The Ekphrastic Review
  • Ekphrastic Journal
  • About
  • Writers
  • Give
    • Merch
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
  • Ebooks
  • Submit
  • Prizes
  • Ekphrastic Writing Challenges
  • Contact
  • TERcets Podcast

Keith Haring (d. 1990), by Melissa Tuckman

9/15/2020

0 Comments

 

Keith Haring (d. 1990)
 
A crucifix burlesqued: two bodies
intersecting where they shouldn't. Primal
 
compulsion to distort, by scarring,
tarps and concrete. Strokes, effluent tracings
 
wowing you with motion. Sickened
by the televangelists, ambivalent
 
Jesus-freak or Satanist, he
measured heavens with his brush, retorquing
 
scripture and a few choice myths.
His pregnant women danced. His Ten Commandments
 
bore no labels—though you guessed
the head with brain replaced by tennis rackets,
 
houses, cars, and (here, most prescient)
personal computers warned against
 
bad acquisitions, wrongful clutter,
tech idolatry. Where the brain had gone
 
was everywhere, its sulci crawling
over church exteriors, on walls
 
enclosing public pools and splitting
cities. High and low. He cerebellumed
 
half the northern hemisphere
before the fall. . . He never drafted, letting
 
lines escape and drip, continuous
to the final year, when all the erstwhile
 
angels, devils, serpents, boogieing
penetrants, and Three-Mile-Island babies
 
fused, abstracted, in a maze
with no dead ends, a mess of figures sharing
 
limbs, a deviant humanism
broiling on a canvas left unfinished.

Melissa Tuckman

Melissa Tuckman teaches in the English Department at Rowan University. She lives in Philadelphia.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture

    ​​Find a writer, artist, or poem, etc. by searching here:
    PLEASE SUPPORT US
    Join us on FB and Twitter!
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • Ekphrastic Journal
  • About
  • Writers
  • Give
    • Merch
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
  • Ebooks
  • Submit
  • Prizes
  • Ekphrastic Writing Challenges
  • Contact
  • TERcets Podcast