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

Maple Street, London (1915), by Brian Johnson

6/27/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Maple Street, London, by Walter Richard Sickert (Britain) 1915

Maple Street, London (1915)
 
To like desolation more than crowds, and taking-leave more than visits; to like debris more than an old man’s body; to like darkened windows more than light ones, a doorway more than the face and chest, the hands; to like a coat around your slim ankles, and a curb that no one crosses, nobody—a curb for ghosts; yes, to like pavement, to enjoy the feel of grayness and hardness; to feel permanent just before midnight; to prefer standing in the street to standing in a field, and being streetlit to being moonlit, and a small step to lying down; to come into silence as one comes into a family inheritance; to forget the piano lessons and the Austrian; to forget the night of the fair; to forget pudding and holidays and car rides and the beach; to sit in your favorite chair, recalling the week by the book: Bleak House week, then Barchester Towers week, seven days with The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Middlemarch on the horizon; and then to repeatedly boil tea, to repeatedly make toast, to repeatedly prepare for work in the dark, to repeatedly wash dishes in a special way, to repeatedly talk to yourself as Orthodox Christians do when praying; or to string up Christmas cards, and pass your fingertips over raised letters; yes, to think always about Terrance, the rented punt, those leaves spinning in the October water; to have giggled and to recollect that, to have undressed at a certain time and written about it; to like the feeling of bells in sequence; to like Sunday morning more than Saturday night, and fog more than heather, and slow rain more than a deluge, a flood, the gutters overflowing and the banks collapsing; to know that reds, rose and blood and lipstick and ruby, may be held at arm’s length, painted, conjured with, but brown and gray are your daily bread; to know what is governable and what is not, what a doorknob is and what a mood, what meals are and the time of death, hemlines and the true limits of intercourse; and then, to like walking at odd hours, to like inclement weather more than fair, and flint gray more than green; to understand the meaning of on the track, on the track again, on the track, and bare ruined choirs, and shroud of talk; to cradle your purse like you would cradle a child, and also like a child might cradle an old toy, or the grief-stricken their arms; yes, to be swollen and then to be swallowed with no one watching.

Brian Johnson

Brian Johnson is the author of Self-Portrait, a chapbook; Torch Lake and Other Poems, a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award, and Site Visits, a collaborative work with the German painter Burghard Müller-Dannhausen. He has taught creative writing at Brown, Yale, and Southern Connecticut State, where he is currently professor of English.

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