 The Light Fantastic, painting by Janet Snell (USA) 2018 The Light Fantastic Nevertheless, we made our home in a room lit by two candles. One flame glowed while the other flickered. Your light stared like an interrogation; it never let me sleep. Mine blinked and winked until the room closed its lids. Afterward, we watched the moon in the window thicken like skin. Why should we have feared the dark? We’d taken the bright inside us.  Something Up with Which I Will Not Put by Janet Snell (USA) 2007 Something up with which I will not put Outside seeped inside where my before had shut the door on your after. Now inside among, you turn the light down, and then out. Either I am dreaming or your words have learned to zig and zag around and about. Aside from that, they come aboard with the meanings all athwart. They lie about why your without is suddenly within again. Before they arise only to raze, I remember that across is but along, against is beside, and between so near it convinces me that I never wanted you behind, with me this far beyond.  Ring with Tossed Hat painting by Janet Snell (USA) 2019 Ring with Tossed Hat Think of a river dotted with lanterns, and I’ll watch from under this hat until I can no longer make out the yellow pinpricks that were so easy to discern before the dark descended, before I dropped to my knees, before I folded myself into myself, the sky above diagrammed with an exit of clouds flung in a confusion of three-cornered objects that would, could, and should blanket a sky under which the day had spoiled in the sun. Cheryl Snell Cheryl Snell is a poet and writer with collections from Finishing Line, Pudding House, and other publishers. She is also the author of Bombay Trilogy, and she collaborated with her late sister Janet on many ekphrastic projects.
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The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
January 2026
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