René Magritte’s The Unexpected Answer, by Joseph Stanton

The Unexpected Answer, by Rene Magritte (Belgium). 1933.

René Magritte’s The Unexpected Answer
 
The way out or the way in
might be a jagged hole
that breaks through
 
where you need to go.
Despite the door
you might simply have opened.
 
Your advance cracks
a passage unexpected into
a darkness grim and oddly inviting.
 
The floorboards carry you forward
as if yours were an ordinary life,
while the absence of light
 
in the place that waits
would seem to be horrific
and comic all at once,
 
like the life-and-death
exits of Bugs Bunny
and Road Runner that rely
 
on impossibilities
through which no nemesis
could pass.

Joseph Stanton

Joseph Stanton is a professor of art history at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has published many books of ekphrastic poetry, with a new one scheduled in 2019. His work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry, Harvard Review, Image, New York Quarterly, and more. Over 500 of his poems have appeared in journals and anthologies. His awards include the Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award, the Ekphrasis Prize, the James Vaughan Poetry Award, the Ka Palapala Pookela Award for Excellence in Literature, and the Cades Award for Literature. Ekphrastic poetry was one of the central concerns of his doctoral research at New York University, and he conducts ekphrastic writing workshops in New York and Honolulu. For more information on Stanton's latest ekphrastic collection see: http://brickroadpoetrypress.com/order-books/things-seen-by-joseph-stanton