Ekphrasis

Musée des Beaux Arts (1940)

W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just

walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy

life and the torturer’s horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Nocturnal (Horizon Line), 2010, by Teresita Fernández

Orphan

BY BLAS FALCONER

I’d come to help settle your

mother’s affairs. On the last night,

we ate where she worked all

her life. Now that she’s gone,

you said, I’ll never come back.

Looking out over the dark, you saw

a light in the distance, a boat

crossing the bay, and told

the story of the fisherman

cursed to float adrift

forever. You hadn’t thought of it

since you were a child, and held

your hand across the table to

show me how it trembled.

I didn’t understand until, alone,

years later, wandering the city where

I was born, I stood before

a black wall, polished to shimmer,

and it looked to me like the sea

at night, hard and endless.

Decoy Gang War Victim, 1974, by Asco (photographer: Harry Gamboa, Jr.)

For Harry Gamboa, Jr.

Just a tick ago, the actor was a Roman candle

shot to the sky, smudged by rain’s helter-

skelter. His motivation was: he’s a stooge

on L.A.’s sodden turnpike, so we have “to make” art. Got

to rezone and react. The world the bare wall to

his bullet. Got to rile up the populace, to fortify

the arsenal. Once in a while, repopulate and penetrate,

paint a list of incitement onto the walls.

An elder told him that to overturn the city, one must

surrender body/belongings to the one explosive

spectacle of truth, making it ongoing. Pay attention.

To overturn the city, not just the scraps but fervor itself.

Not just the wan broadcast of indignation but

IRL incursions into the workhouses and

poorhouses to inflame the thousand points of light.

A lean surge, departure pinks both ends of him.

He’s the nth layer folded into the stand’s nerve.

Night Magic (Blue Jester), 1988, by Carlos Almaraz

After Federico García Lorca

Blue that I love you

Blue that I hate you

Fat blue in the face

Disgraced blue that I erase

You lone blue

Blue of an alien race

Strong blue eternally graced

Blue that I know you

Blue that I choose you

Crust blue

Chunky blue

Moon blue glows that despise

You — idolize you

Blue and the band disappears

Blue of the single left dog

Blue of the eminent red fog

Blue that I glue you to me

You again and again blue

Blue blue of the helium

Bubble of loveloss

Blue of the whirlwind

The blue being again

Blue of the endless rain

Blue that I paint you

Blue that I knew you

Blue of the blinking lights

Blue of the landing at full tilt

Blue of the wilt

Flower of nightfall

Blue of the shadow

In yellowed windows

Blue of the blown

And broken glass

Blue of the Blue Line

Underlines in blue

Blue of the ascending nude

Blue before the blackness

Of new blue of our winsome

Bedlam Blue of the blue

Bed alone: blue of the one

Who looks on blue of what

Remains of cement fall

Blue of the vague crescent

Ship sailing blue of the rainbow

Of wait blue that I whore

You — blue that I adore you

Blue of the bluest door

Blue my painted city

In blue (it blew.)