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

Two Poems After Georgia O'Keeffe, by Kasia Merrill

2/1/2023

1 Comment

 
Picture
Horse’s Skull with White Rose, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA) 1931

Bones

I think it’s the rose
at the crown of the skull
that speaks.

she makes death dainty
this horse
with the long head
her skin shed
long before
she propped it up
to model for a painting.

I think it’s that she died in the desert and let herself be found.
I think it’s her loneliness, her white on black. Her duality.

I think it’s the curved teeth
tilted to the left
              a bite of the black
that does it.

I think it’s that I like to think about dying
not because I want us to die
but because it makes me feel safe
              prepared for an event 
              marked in pen 
              on my calendar 
a long-standing invitation
most shy away from
when circled in red.

I think it’s the three holes burrowed in her skull
like hands and feet to a cross.

I think that it’s not religious
but religious in the way that everything is
a fake answer to a question
like any object we try to name.

I think it’s the boldness.
I think it’s the shadow that might hide the body
or might not.

I think it’s the curves that open 
at the missing eyeballs.

I think it’s how whole it is.
How plain.

**

bouquet

i’m looking at the cow skull carried in the hands of my Georgian friends
as they walk from an abandoned farm deep in the thrush of my family’s property;
someone’s going to bleach it they say
someone’s going to take it home to Brooklyn
and hope they don’t smell the death by their bed. 

i’m looking at an invisible body
swallowed by the black, maybe never existing at all 
carried out of the sands and most likely mounted
picked to pieces and topped with a floral crown
while we make plans to be stored in tight coffins –
a million bone portraits that’ll never be made.

i need you to understand that i’m protective
that even the dead can glow from an eye
and wear white to a wedding.

i need you to look at it
flinch when the skin is sucked from the bone
flinch when you see how easily it can be broken
flinch when you know the sound of bone in the desert
when the sun bakes life into your name.

Kasia Merrill

Kasia Merrill is a fiction writer based in Maryland. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Fiction International, Breadcrumbs Mag, and The Appalachian Review, and she has been a GRITLit contest honourable mention and a Best of the Net nominee. In 2022, she was selected to be a Peter Taylor fellow for the Kenyon Writer’s Workshop. She is currently at work on her first novel.
1 Comment
Aureliano
2/3/2023 10:36:10 pm

I read all the poems on the site, enjoyed all of them but I liked “Bones” the most! By the time I finished reading it, I’m not sure I was still thinking of a skull in the painting or of all the skulls in everything around us. I don’t know why it feels so beautiful but maybe because, in the words of the author
“how whole it is.
How plain”

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY
    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    Join us on Facebook:
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    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 theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

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