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The fun thing about magnet poetry is that the meaning of this entirely changed because I couldn’t find the right word

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Cannot stop thinking about Anne magill paintings. Maybe my new favorite painter. She just captures this ..,,,,,, dreamy feeling...,,, a certain tenderness..... a fleeting moment of contentedness..... like nothing else I’ve seen

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Gabriele Smargiassi

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I don’t know you anymore

You flew out for spring break two years ago

We’ve hardly spoken since then

I don’t believe in horoscopes

But every time I see one

I check yours.

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Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus by John William Waterhouse (1900)

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Exponatus - by Konstantin Korobov. Russian artist. oil on canvas

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Maxfield Parrish (American 1870-1966),Sunrise, 1933, Print on paper

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Le Pandemonium (1841) by John Martin

The Commandant

Who is he to presume

He may command the scene before him?

The helm and shield he wields

As magnificent and regal as they are

Are no apt tools against the fires

That rise to his feet

The bastion before him

Stretches far into the distance

Miles, perhaps, tens of them

It could not have been built

Or ruled

By human hands

Does he rule it nonetheless?

Is he human?

The flames surge tenfold

With a rise of his arm

No, he cannot be human

For his subjects are not men

But the very flames that burn below him

Yet do not touch his citadel

He is a god

A monster

Certainly he cannot be a man

Or, at least

He cannot be a man anymore

Who is he?

He does not simply presume

To command the flames

He does

They yield beneath his gaze

Like grasses before a wind

Or men before a blade

Perhaps he was a man, once

Perhaps he would’ve been burned by these flames

Those which he no longer fears

But whatever he is now, man or god

Or something entirely different

He is one of them

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Hecuba and Polyxena, circa 1814

By Merry-Joseph Blondel, French

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Nymphs Dancing to Pan’s Flute by Joseph Tomanek (1889-1974)

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The Lament For Icarus (1898) by Herbert Draper

The Lament of Icarus

The stories will tell you

That my wings were fragile

That my feathers were bound with wax

And the heat of the sun was my demise

But as I lay here in the laps of my would-be saviors

I find my wings intact

I am still blinded from the sun

But under my hands

They feel the same as they did

In my father’s workshop

Soft and strong and free

The stories will tell you it was my hubris

And the heat too close to the sun

But the truth is that my hands are weak with chill

My toes bitten with frostbite

My skin chafed by icy wind

Apollo is not a warm god

When he showed himself to me the first time

It was in a dark corner of our prison

Shrouded in shadows and frost

I did not believe he was the sun

He whispered the idea of wings

Into my father’s ear

As I watched from that same corner

Eager to be free

Free with him

He told me the sky would be warm

He told me I would make it high enough

If I could just make it high enough

He would bring me home to him

The tips of my fingers are wet

From the ice dripping from my feathers

And the ocean I plummeted so far into

This stone, even shaded by cliffs

Is warmer than my sun god ever was

My would-be saviors are crying, now

Nymphs, maybe, or dryads

One with her arm beneath my head

Her skin, cooler than any human’s would be

Is warmer than mine

With her hand pressed to my ribcage

She can tell my oh-so-human heart

Isn’t beating

In the shade of these ivory cliffs

I am shielded from Apollo himself

His glare

But I can still feel his gaze

He knows I am dead

Perhaps he meant it that way

Perhaps I was an idle game of gods

Or perhaps

He intended to free me

From the cold grasp of life

Into the warm cradle of death

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An ekphrasis poem on what I think is a WW1 era post card

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The Fallen Angel (1847) by Alexandre Cabanel

The Fallen God

Does the ivy sting his feet?

His ankles, his calves?

Poisonous and sharp

But not as sharp as his gaze

It was Her that made him fall

God’s gaze is no less biting

But far more powerful

She will not turn a blind eye

To his creations

Perfect, you were

She claims

His wings shimmering and vivid and cool

So far from the heat he will find himself in

Perfect

Her voice disparaging, distant

Until unrighteousness was found in you

Struck down for pride, She says

He is too prideful of himself

Prideful of the self She created

Made in Her image, long before Eve

Or Adam

Prideful of his creations

His eyes sting with tears

As the ivy stings his feet

Is the ivy one of Her creations?

Or one of his?

Are we made in Her image?

Or in his?

And the others do not look

They reach for each other

As he reached for them

Grasping and pleading and begging

For someone to save him

They do not dare go against Her

The way he had

They do not think of him

They will not

Not until he raises

An army of his own

To take back his throne of creation

With a force made in His image

And a scepter wound in the same ivy

He will storm

Not yet, though

Soon He will rise

Until then

The ivy stings His feet

His ankles, His calves

And He thinks

Of how He will strike god down

For her crimes

Of uncreation

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Sixteen

Three years old.

Purple flowers in the front yard

Mom and dad’s red-and-cream sheets

Moving boxes.

Three and a half.

Bunk beds I don’t remember

Desert rocks

Packing tape.

Four.

Training wheels, riding in the ditch out back

The driveway with the ants out front

U-Haul trucks.

Five.

Bushes out front with red berries. The tree in the yard with green ones,

And the big, towering branches in the back

That rained crab apples in the fall

When we’d rake the whole yard

To make a pile under The Climbing Tree

So we could swing from the branches into it

One at a time.

Nerf wars in a world covered in white,

Pretending to snowboard down our little hill

Climbing the mountain the snowplow left on the empty side of our cul-de-sac

Trampoline springs and mud castles and cicadas and bikes and sprinklers and snow boots

And freedom and childhood and carelessness and home

And moving boxes.

Ten.

I leave my childhood behind

It doesn’t snow in Las Vegas.

Fourteen.

I am still growing.

I don’t know where I’m from.

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Master List

Sixteen- ‘Where I’m From’ poetry

The Fallen God- ekphrasis poem based on The Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel

The Lament for Icarus