Ekphrastic poems
CLUSTER
Aurora Loop Gallery
Port Townsend
Washington
The Concept
Collaborative Work
Contributing artists: Carolyn Autenrieth, Marilyn Charlat Dix, Dawn Endean, Rosalie Frankel, Stephanie Hargrave, Ellen Hochberg, Eliaichi Kimaro, and June Sekiguchi.
Each artwork is created from a culmination of 7 prompts: Who, What, When, Where, How, Why, and So What.
Each artist started with a 12x18 piece of watercolor paper and responded to the first prompt: “Who”. At monthly CLUSTER meetings, the pieces passed on unseen, to the next artist through a non-repetitive algorithm. Artworks were added to or changed in response to the next prompt in sequence with consideration/response to the work from the previous artist. Intentionally, ‘rules’ about how to respond were left on the table to allow artists to work freely with the pieces and inspiration on each rotation.
As the works progressed, the actual stages were documented but not shown to each other, to preserve the ‘mystery’ and development. Each artist opening their package was responding to the work in whatever stage it was, seeing it for the first time.
“So What” - The final stage and poetry
After artists completed the final stage, Writer and Poet, Arlene Naganawa (CLUSTER member) was given access to all the images to respond to the final “So What” prompt, helping to pull everything together and provide context for all the creative decisions that came before. Her words help tie the visual narrative together, making sense of the shifting ideas and letting viewers see how the whole process unfolded.
Art & Poems
At the Party
The baby wears the soft hat the nurses unfold
over every newborn’s head. Her eyes open.
Streamers of film unfurl among the guests:
light to sound, sound to music:
jazz floats in the background. We all stop
for a moment, the deep night filled with snow.
Still as photographs, bare limbed, we take
root, saplings still. The infant blooms,
first flower from another world.
Don’t Ask Again
See my apron, the one with cherries printed
on the bib, sash tied behind my back?
See the cloth spread on the breakfast table,
egg on a dish, ripe berries smashed?
Who brewed and poured the coffee at 6 a.m,
half and half dissolved in darkness?
Where’s your clean boxers? Where’s your toast?
What’s with your teeth? Why should I know?
How You Love
mathematics, the clean numbers,
order of operations, an equation
where everything is fair.
But your pristine circle
is fractured by an alphabet of dreams,
a stutter of letters (he didn’t
mean to) faces separate and blued:
the 1 + 1 of you and who
you’d hoped to be with for infinity.
Oh, zip unzip–
the talons inside
your wildest longings
still tear you apart.
Remember the sun, grasses under the sky,
heat on your legs, crickets and spiders,
slim scaly creatures rustling alongside you.
Remember the seeds you gathered
in your palms–sunflower, pinecones.
Berries bitten by field mice.
And remember the sea that we came from—
the serrated wrack, harpoon weed, dulse,
Irish moss, sugar kelp, bootlace weed.
Remember the tide pools, purple
with seastars, anemones, urchins.
Moon jellies smooth to your touch.
Remember the moon with her thousand faces:
dandelion, goldenrod, mouse-ear hawkweed.
And sleepy nights, belly pressed to the earth,
learning the dark just before morning.
Remember the hands that drew you here.
Remember the Sky That You Were Born Under
-after Joy Harjo
The True Dwelling of the Holy
Paper: holy
& the thread.
brush
breath
*
We traveled to see the temples,
rain on our paper umbrellas.
Parasols, I said, to no one in particular.
Monkeys cried in the forest .
*
And the next:
reflection in the ponds,
taste of wild fruit.
*
Invisible children
appear in your dream
picking mint from your garden.
Their fragrance lingers
into early evening.
Unstitching
Friend, do you remember rolling
up and down Sixteenth, metal keys
tightening our skates to our shoes,
rubber toe caps scuffed from dragging
on sidewalks? And the garter snakes
we rescued from boys in the alley,
draping the red-stitched lengths
over branches into shoeboxes, holes
punched in the lids? And turquoise
aluminum tumblers of Kool-Aid spilled
on your porch littered soft with cedar?
Crying coming from inside the house,
muffled conversations on the telephone.
What happened to those girls,
the ones who wanted to see the eclipse,
sun disappearing and returning,
hope sweeping over them like swans?
Polyptych
We combed for unbroken shells,
hoping for clean white saucers
of scallops, spiraled whelks.
Spines scattered among driftwood.
Your plane rose from the tarmac.
Later, in the clouds
I saw a shadow:
the back of your wool coat,
your hair.
You handed me dried rosettes,
blue fragile clusters.
And bleak thoughts, scribbled.
I saved those, pinned them
in my closet, inside the door
I could close, then open.
(Bird in Hand)
birds crash into a building of mirrors–
bone break heartbreak sky scrape:
drawers of dead northern flickers
packed close as fishing lures row after row
their speckled breasts facing left,
underwings speaking the news.
In their afterlife, crows chip and rattle,
alarmed by our faces mirrored there.
