According to Poetryfoundation.org: " An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning."
Students in Creative Writing were tasked with writing an Ekphrastic poem about another student's art, and each issue we will feature new art and a related Ekphrastic poem.
antidote for the amaurotic. by jet colonna
empty eye sockets blinded by oversaturated colors despite the dark shadows swallowing me up
no light shines here only the dark engulfing it all i can’t feel anything but my face burns acid dripping down my cheeks from my eyelids
i swore i heard something moving a glimpse from the corner of my vision but i cannot be sure
i cannot be sure until i feel the sting of teeth sinking into my ankle and the venom stirring through my veins
and my head hurts fracturing like stone at the hands of a sculptor and my head hurts until i bring my foot down against the snake and crush its skull into dust.
The Watchers By Joseph Vendetti
the golden Semyaza wrought a staircase of wandering souls and used it to descend from heaven other angels followed him, seeking a godless place to stain with blood from the back of their throats they dredged up a cruel laughter, thick and dripping, that struck the world like a sword they sang the ballad of entropy and extinction, of lions and the lost gospels, of shivering atoms bent to the will of the wicked and the world shuddered and God rolled over in his sleep, wrapping the universe tighter around him
the angels gnashed their teeth and sang welcome to your judgment day they settled on the earth like locusts, hissing we will bring about your end and they spread the forbidden wisdom like a plague, teaching of metallurgy and the moon until every human had a dagger in his belt
they began to lust for human women, of a beauty different from that of the clouds or the sunlight or the LORD the allure of flesh, to be picked apart by vultures and other winged creatures with a hunger they welded their horrible pneumawith the earthly bodies of the women and monsters quickened in their wombs and God trembled in his rest
the nephilim, half-divine half-bloodmeat all-abomination, stood tall as giants in their cutting smiles you saw Semyaza’s malice Yeqon’s greed, Azazel’s iron, Gadreel’s ways of murder their fathers shrieked with laughter for forty days and forty nights, ceaseless and haunting, before rising back to the golden doors of New Jerusalem their genocide complete
the nephilim, eschatology incarnated, roamed the world they reeked of the impossible, portent festering in their palms and under their tongues cursed to be apocalypse children and God lurched from his sleep, seeing for the first time the humans with the forbidden knowledge and the awful nephilim
quaking with the sorrow of one destined for prolicide, he cried:
i did not want it to end this way, my children
in his grief he wept for forty days and forty nights, flooding that good earth he had labored over, drowning his creations
i love you, i’m sorry, we will start again, i’m sorry, i love you