Ekphrastic Poetry

Abstract

Ekphrastic Poetry Cristina Correa (bio) Instructions for Remembering After Bibiana Suarez's Memoria(Memory), 2005-2011, 108 alumalite panels This starts on the urgent wing of an endangered bird; language isan experiment we perform on ourselves; sound this out— flip bone, swap card, trace vein, strike organ, mine first, start again —spear these wordswith your eyes; let us cloak ourselvesin gold; we'll recognizeour skin from the outside. [End Page 189] How to Teach Lack After Candida Alvarez's Wonky, 2014, Flashe on canvas and artist tape Click for larger view View full resolution Candida Alvarez, Wonky, 2014. Flashe paint and tape on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Tom Van Eynde. [End Page 190] Leave it Open After Edra Soto's GRAFT, 2013, Site-specific installation/wood structure Click for larger view View full resolution Edra Soto, GRAFT at Terrain, 2013. Architectural intervention. Courtesy of the artist. [End Page 191] Translation After María Gaspar's Almost True, 2011, Plastic, thread, steel armature, fans, air What is this roomI'm always in? This languageI'm almost translating? Where is the windowand who holds it shut? I want to see a new kind of light,where is the light in my house? What is almost trueabout this story is that someone is telling it.An ode to life, or waste, or thingswe touch. Three cyclopseswith throats for eyeballs glaringat us, filling the room with their cool sentenceIf I made a pile of everything I will throw out in my lifetimeand put it in one room, I'd be buried blind,howling for air, and not much would change. Click for larger view View full resolution María Gaspar, Almost True (durational sculpture inflated and deflated every two minutes), 2011. Plastic, thread, steel armature, fans, air 20 x 12 x 5 ft. Courtesy of the artist. [End Page 192] Revisited After Silvia Malagrino's Burnt Oranges, 2005, Film still Orange is the color of waiting. Cloaked street lamp, flesh-ripped pavement, boiling breath. The stain and pucker of burning. Foot soldiers march in circles, a silent petition to forget the color orange. Forget the dark. Left is only forensic sunlight, bodiesawakening under a blood lamp. Paint clear the faces, make impermanent the boxes,and put them in. Nothing could be more illuminated. Forget it. A line sets, paper dries, and the ghastly instant never ends. Click for larger view View full resolution Silvia Malagrino, Mom with Match. Burnt Oranges film still, 2005. Courtesy of the artist. [End Page 193] Searchlight After Elsa Muñoz's Drifting Sun, 2010, Oil on panel The pink moon of a face pulses urgent as shadows wait. It's as simple as this:an ear is a pool of light that drowns out lonely meaning. Listen backfor vein or blood. Tug back the hair long as a fence that grows in the light. The other side of her waiting mind. I'd tell you, don't waitto go into the light. Remember, this is simple. Golden the branches, the innocent bars, the slapped wood, the heaving cheek, the not-unseeable blackness. This shimmering pain, this circulatory growing will always find you. Click for larger view View full resolution Elsa Muñoz, Drifting Sun/Sol a la deriva, 2010. Oil on masonite panel 25 ⅜ x 37 ⅜ in. National Museum of Mexican Art Permanent Collection, Gift of the artist. Photo by Michael Tropea. Digital image courtesy of the National Museum of Mexican Art and the artist. [End Page 194] Cristina Correa Correa, Cristina is a Midwestern Voices & Visions awardee and has received fellowships from VONA/Voices, Indiana University Writers' Conference, and Ragdale Foundation. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Best New Poets 2015, Vinyl Poetry, MAKE: A Literary Magazine, Western Humanities Review, and Latino Poetics (University of New Mexico, 2017); broadcast on National Public Radio's Latino USA; and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. She is an MFA candidate at Cornell University. Copyright © 2017 Center for Latino Research at DePaul University