my
favourite writing stills scenes, plasticine, to establish texture ─ a leaf
balming the space between fingers, everything that looks like a pearl ─
before
it thaws and peels away into the mind’s secret life.
-
ekphrasis:
art writing, often of a painted scene. a gaze that blonds pigment,
anthropomorphizes, drifts. elaborates or just digresses because conclusion
doesn’t always leave room to beat-between the way juxtaposition can.
-
i
have called my criticism a hope to “capture what it feels like,” “pursuit of the ‘yes! exactly,’” a yell into dark to
hear the dimpled shape.
-
what
is the word for finding out there is one?
-
and
why does it matter for a way of looking to zip into a self-contained jumble of
syllables?
-
because
a word introduces its own ideal, some solid knot at a distance. direction.
-
plus,
out of words, worlds.
-
because
although i love criticism’s easy fix,
although
i know this is my stretch,
ekphrasis
is the way i feel around everything.
-
memories
thick as paint, as prone to oxidation.
-
- -
the
day after the word, i paint a self-portrait. cheetah print sundapple.
i
look at myself, don’t; look like myself, don’t. lose myself, find, find my
brother, both. stroke, stroke. a guessing toward recognition.
-
in
the original portrait, my eyes smudge beyond fatigue, so i paint them shut.
allow relief.
a
mimicry of ekphrasis’ ultimate teleology,
which
is a rendering beyond duplication.
the
space between fingers, a pearl.
i learned about
ekphrasis from Luther Hughes’ september 2019 frontier poetry column, where he discusses its power to assert and
redefine what is considered art. i frantically tweeted my thanks, which will
never be enough.
émilie
kneifel is a sick fish, goo fish, they fish, blue fish (critic, poet, and
co-creator of playd8s, a show for you if you need it). find 'em at
emiliekneifel.com, @emiliekneifel, and in Tiohtiáke, hopping and hoping.