Ekphrastic poem

Black Widows

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Georgia O’Keeffe, Three Women (1918), watercolour and graphite on paper, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, gift of Gerald & Kathleen Peters

Widows’ weeds is what we wear
Stiflingly hot in midday air
Houses usurped by eldest sons
Post-husbands, post-menopause, we
Convene daily, really to see
That we still live, it’s hardly fun
But beneath each blackened shell
Bright colours of our glory days
Belie this ghastly latter phase
We dream of Heaven, live in Hell
Gossip our only consolation
The fauve follies of the young
Who’s deserving, who should be hung
Judgment brings but scant elation…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Melissa Lemay in Poetics, invites us to write an ekphrastic poem inspired by a selection of paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe…

Melissa also gave us a selection of art terms to incorporate into our poem and I chose just one fauve, the French word for “wild animal” that gave it’s name to the Fauvists who painted in very bright colours…

Reading Aloud…

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I like to read out loud
to turn tiny marks
regimented on the page
from text to sound
filtered through eyes that read
brain to comprehend
a mouth that shapes my voice.
Poetry or prose the
writer laid words down
wrapped round meanings
all their own but
which we readers too
may catch and breathe
out into space between
mouth and ear
reader and listener.
Even reading aloud alone
brings out meaning, makes it clear
and once peeled from the page
I sit and let the words hang there…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Artwork by Catrin Welz-Stein

Tonight, our host over at dVerse Poets Pub is lillian in Poetics who, feeling nostalgic on the occasion of her 8th anniversary hosting at the bar, has resurrected for the third time, an ekphrastic prompt provided by the artist Catrin Welz-Stein. Catrin has enjoyed providing the inspiration for the pub-goers twice before and enjoys the interaction. I picked one of the four pictures which Catrin kindly allowed us to use…