Letter to Kandinsky, by Jeanne DeLarm

Panel For Edwin R. Campbell No. 3, by Vasily Kandinsky (Russia) 1914

Letter to Kandinsky

Caviar nests in your black shot lines.
Why abandon the old-time net?
You block a cheese to staunch the blood.
The fish, stitched shut, bumps icy air,
yet the bow of the boat lets him flounder.
 
Teepee triangle, squared-edge gash,
I find no native, no human form.
Your buzzing pear tickles my ear.
Diagonal flag-red stripes the rain.
Where is France? Your Russian home?
 
Background cloth of messy wine;
you’ve spilled the camping meal from your chest. 
An antennaed bug leans on the frame.
Why embrace the wolfish face?
Sun orange, burnt cloud, whipping water,
 
Your pictures move, deny the stagnant.
No touch of brown decay or graves.
A leafed umbrella drips, wrapped in July.

Jeanne DeLarm

Jeanne DeLarm was born in the northwest corner of Connecticut and now lives diagonally across the state at the southeast corner with her husband of forty-three years.  The poem published here in The Ekphrastic Review came about while viewing a Kandinsky mural during a Paintings and Painters workshop at the Museum of Modern Art. Her poems and essays have been included in various journals and magazines. A chapbook of poems titled My Father’s Mirror, was published by California State University in January 2025.  ​