Transformation of Lizzie, by Ann Howells

Portrait of Elizabeth Baroness Bachofen-Echt by Gustav Klimt (Austria) 1914.

Transformation of Lizzie                                
          
Cocooned in white lace
a serious dark-haired woman
entwines herself in her cloak, 
faces the artist,
demands metamorphosis.
Colorful minions stare
transfixed
as she emerges –
a burgeoning moon moth.
Extravagant. Exotic.
What sorcery in his brush! 

Ann Howells

Ann Howells, of Dallas, Texas, edited Illya’s Honey eighteen years. Her books are: Under a Lone Star (Village Books, 2016) and a D/FW anthology she edited, Cattlemen & Cadillacs (Dallas Poets Community, 2016). Her chapbook, Softly Beating Wings (Blackbead, 2017), was published as winner of the William D. Barney Chapbook Contest. Her latest collection, So Long As We Speak Their Names, a series of poems centered around watermen on the Chesapeake Bay, will be released in spring from Bowen Books. Recent work has appeared in Chiron Review, I-70 Review, Paddock Review, San Pedro River Review, and The Langdon Review.