The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

​Triptych: an Elegy, by Angela M. Brommel

7/13/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Photograph by Adnanta Raharja (Indonesia) Contemporary. Courtesy of Unsplash.

Triptych: an Elegy
 

author's note: Shortly after the death of my dear friend I found myself unable to describe the depth of this loss, unable to write much of anything. As I struggled to write an elegy, I knew that the best way for me to honour him was to imagine his stories as told through a mural. As a cultural journalist and artist-scholar, he lived a life full of stories that could be told through ekphrastic works. “Triptych” gave me a framework for circling into the poem.
​
When all of us wrote love poems you wrote about a city of angels, the view from a loft, a new city in the Mojave with its own angel dressed in blue. 

You took every chance to bend the rules until you created small poems embedded in city maps or shaped like newspaper stories, or images with names that were poems unto themselves. Always the journalist and photographer. Always, why can’t it be done?

Even so, once we talked about what would happen if you wrote yourself into your work. I don’t know if you even could, but your poet-heart returned to Riverside whenever we talked. Someday when you were less busy, you said, you would write the story of a first kiss in the orange groves. 

I will write your poem for you. No, I will make a mural - a triptych - and we will paint it in this desert that you loved.

The first panel: It will start outside your home as someone in the neighbourhood is fixing their car and your favourite music is playing. Your mother is cooking, your father is near. You are drawing in the living room, and everything is still a beginning.

The second panel: You find yourself in a grove of oranges under the stars. There is starlight on white blossoms so fragrant you are taken aback by the knowledge of leaving soon. 

In the distance you see a skyline lit by the same stars, and there is more beauty than you can ever capture with your camera or pen. It’s then that you remember the grove. 

The third panel: When the blossoms take hold the mural ends with you among rows of oranges everywhere, spilling to the ground. Such sweet abundance that the fruit on the boughs are too heavy for the trees to keep it all to themselves.
​

Angela M. Brommel

editor's note: The photograph shown was selected by the editor to illustrate the poem, which  features an imagined artwork.

Angela M. Brommel, is a Nevada writer with Iowa roots. She is the author of the Plutonium &  Platinum Blonde (Serving House Books, 2018), and her poetry has been featured in The Best American Poetry Blog, the North American Review, The Literary Review-TLR Share, and Sweet: A Literary Confection, among many other journals, anthologies, and art exhibitions. Her full-length poetry collection, Mojave in July, is forthcoming from Tolsun Books. She is the Executive Director of the Office of Arts & Culture, as well as part-time faculty in Humanities, at Nevada State College. You can also find her at The Citron Review as Editor-in-Chief.




0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY

    This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies.

    Opt Out of Cookies
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Join us: Facebook and Bluesky
    @ekphrasticreview.



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Lorette C. Luzajic [email protected] 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • The Ekphrastic Academy
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead