The ekphrastic poem

This weekend I had the great fortune of reading at the Berkeley Art Museum, invited by Sharon Coleman and MK Chavez.  I was invited a few weeks back.  It required writing in response to the art represented in the museum.

How does one write to art?  For me, the process began by going to the museum, taking pictures, writing notes.  Over the week I gave myself to write, I thought on the pieces that I wanted to explore in words.  My favorite is the one below:

The peacock comes with LSD In Search of the Golden City

            After Isaac Abrams, 1965

Imagine every flicker of eye :

a garden of hands, upturned and begging

to caress your secret places,

paint your wiry in lapis tinge

and within each petal :

shadow cut mountain,

exhaling in rock slide,

followed by inhale, flavored

by lightning kissed ozone

don’t try to make sense of sacrament

where the trip takes you

is where waterfalls begin

rushing and cool at crevice

shooting out between lush green

yes, that is the twinned face

your father’s mother painted in corn

or Tuscan sun or daffodil

yellow in glamouring light

her heads ride Dijon waves

she is saying be punk

pray nice

and yes, that is an egg,

holding a black hole,

holding a distant yellow sun,

which pulses the forgotten

names of the cells before sludge

before you

yes a poppy, a sunflower, a razor sharp

fan beneath a child’s attempt at pretty

imagine the paper darma

pleasure tab beneath the tongue

rolled high to tickle the palate

for palette fund

these spirits calling your

jack rabbit eyes to see

the truth of the matter

the sense in and of yes

#twt