Three Poets After Anna Lee Hafer: Breanna Hanley, Olivia Hanna, Marjorie Maddox

Breaking of Faith, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2018. Click on image for artist site.

Broken Faith
​
The depths of Tartarus can’t compare
to the endless and unholy darkness that swirls across the canvas.

The evils that lurk in Pandora’s hellish box
could hardly hold a candle to the horrors found here. 

Mortals weep in shock and horror,
their feeble minds broken by the images of destruction  they are shown. 

Broken faith, like the bonds shattered between 
Jason and Medea.

Trickery and lies, like those declared by Odysseus 
so that “nobody” could maim poor Polyphemus.

Abandonment, as Aeneas abandoned 
Dido to wallow in despair until her last breath. 

But it is not all destruction,
and it is not all fear. 

Ares gazes in awe at the battlefield, 
the bloody reds and soulless greys smeared for all to see. 

Artemis gasps in delight as she glimpses the moons on the page,
clearly a tribute to her.

The writhing mass of colours and shapes 
a pentimento of the betrayals that named it. 

There was beauty in destruction,
and rebirth in betrayal. 

Reclaiming the happiness stolen by the hurt
restores the faith that had been broken. ​

Breanna Hanley

Breanna Hanley is an English major with a concentration in writing and a minor in Women and Gender Studies at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, USA. She plans on graduating in May of 2022. She currently resides in the small town of Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. In her spare time — outside of writing — she enjoys crocheting and playing video games with her friends. She hopes to one day have a job doing editorial work for a publishing company and write her own novel.

Sun on South Street, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2019. Click on image for artist site.

 
Sun on South Street
 
The sun was everywhere, once,
drenching each corner with incandescence,
pooling around fat cats as they lie,
kissing the face of a woman
to wake her in the early, white dawn.
 
There were years of ever-sunlight
on South Street; this world content
to glow, to grow sunflowers
in sidewalk cracks, to dance
in beams across the floor.
 
A woman waltzed in the sun on South Street,
once. Her bare feet swung 
in sweet tandem with each fractal
of light, flitting over
the floor’s worn boards.
 
The sun peers, now,
through cracks in the haphazard
handiwork, sometimes glinting
off nails left jutting out
into the South Street darkness.
 
The boards pried from the floor,
pinned to the window pane,
pitiful in their effort to forget
what once shone here, 
who once danced in light.
 
Every sun-spot long faded,
only golden memory remains,
wandering lonely halls,
enveloped in cutting wool,
left to decay with South Street’s pain.

Olivia Hanna

Olivia Hanna is a Social Work major at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, USA. She plans on graduating in May of 2024. In her spare time she enjoys playing music and making art.

The Library, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2019. Click image for artist site.

The Choice 
          
Late night, mid-morning, dawn, 
the door of the library clicks open, 
cracks wide to rooms of elsewhere 
& beyond—imagination’s Open-Sésame 
 
to other doors, libraries, landscapes. Click open 
possibility. What book shall we pull from the shelves? 
Beyond Open-Sésames, imagination’s magic 
enters the mind’s inner workings, gathers 
 
possibilities. What book shall we pull from the shelves? 
What ancient treasure tug from the tale? 
The mind’s inner workings enter in, gather 
tools of chessboard and floor, bookcase stacked 
 
with tale and treasure, the ancient why 
of creation sparking each synapse 
of stacked choice: chess, ceiling, floor, books—tools 
to chisel word and image onto the shaped space 
 
of creation. Sparking each synapse, 
the mind reaches beyond reason to memory, 
chisels word and image onto the shaped spaces 
of now, before, maybe, if—choice 
 
the reason the mind reaches beyond memory, 
mirroring the large and small. This way. 
Choose now, before, maybe, if— 
or not. Your turn. Concentrate. 
 
Mirror the large and small. This way. 
Do you remember? Can you stay? 
Yes? No? Your turn. Concentrate. 
What move in chess shall we open with? 
 
Do you remember? Can you stay? 
What voice is woven in the fabric? 
What move in chess shall we open with? 
Follow the arrows to pawn or king. 
 
What voice is woven in the fabric? 
Here is the story of Open-Sésame. 
Follow the arrows to pawn or king, 
rooftop or floorboards. Don’t go 
 
without a story. Open-Sésame 
your way to elsewhere & beyond. 
Climb rooftops. Sketch floorboards. Go. 
What path shall we take today through this library? 
 
This way to elsewhere & beyond. 
A splatter is not a mistake, but a choice. 
What path shall we take today through this library? 
Follow the inner workings of the mind. 
 
A splatter is a choice, not a mistake. 
Cracks open the room to elsewhere. 
Always the inner workings of the mind follow 
choice. Each dawn, mid-morning, night, 
 
crack open rooms to elsewhere. 
You hold the pen and paintbrush. 
Late-night, mid-morning, or dawn, choose 
imagination. Click open the door to the library. 
 
Marjorie Maddox

*Used by permission of the artist. Italicized phrases are taken from the artist’s description of the work, as well as from words and phrases hidden within the painting.

Ark, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2021. Click on image for artist site.

Ark 
 
Ladders to below/above to 
turn off the faucet to 
 
weeping to 
turn on the spigot to 
 
here/now to  
unleash the liquid to 
 
water to weary to whiplash to 
swirl in the iris of horizon to 
 
witness the wet of windswept to 
hide in the eye of reject to 
 
float in the drowning of hopeless to 
breathe in the rattling of broken to 
 
gasp with the mouth of ocean to 
curl with the swish of sudden to 
 
gulp with the whir of twisters to 
swallow with the salt of senseless to 
 
blur with the vision of serpents to 
spew with the sputum of whales to 
 
reek with the regurgitation of Jonah to 
sink in the rise of remorse to 
 
know with the blind-eye of Noah to 
soar on the dry-sky with dove to 
 
circle the submersion of world to  
flutter and hover to  
 
dive and discover to 
finally land. 

Marjorie Maddox

Noise, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2021. Click image for artist site.

Noise 

My own  
 
electrical storm break- 
dancing the sky of skull, 
 
riotous riffs  
on the unpredictable. 
Even before the EEG 
 
MC’d asymmetrical jerks,  
my tolerance for sound’s 
tossed out with each 
dizzying jag of note. 
             
Each ragged twirl,  
each syncopation on steroids,  
batters the cerebral, 
cyclone gone haywire 
into some vast static of seizure. 
 
Richter scale of cacophony— 
tornado and earthquake, 
firework and fissure— 
this ramped-up Chaos  
             
axes the faux door, 
pummels the thin walls, 
evicts balance from the brain. 
             
No predictable melodic 
drone sliding forward  
 
toward home, no Quiet  
Sweet Quiet 
 
easing the night into calm. 
 
Marjorie Maddox

Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 13 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation, about her father’s unsuccessful heart transplant; Begin with a Question (Paraclete 2022) and the ekphrastic collaboration with Karen Elias Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts 2022)—the story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite); four children’s/YA books; and Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania(co-editor). Her forthcoming collection, In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, an ekphrastic collection based on 17 paintings by Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work ) and including work by artists Margaret Munz-Losch, Antar Mikosz, Ingo Swann, Karen Elias, Greg Mort, and Christian Twamley), is forthcoming (Shanti Arts 2023). Please see www.marjoriemaddox.com

Anna Lee Hafer is a studio artist based in the Philadelphia area whose work is heavily influenced by famous surrealist painters such as Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso, all of whom strove to create their own realities. these works are small glimpses into a particularly confusing, but utterly unique worldview that entirely dictates and follows its own specific set of rules.  Anna Lee Hafer graduated from Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Fine Art. She relocated to the Philadelphia area to pursue a career in studio art. Previous experience in the art field includes: studio exhibitions at Davison art gallery and Rochester contemporary art center in Rochester, NY, as well as publications in Still Point Arts Quarterly. Please see www.hafer.work