February 3 -- Neil Ellman

Early Sunday Morning

(Edward Hopper, painting)

On the seventh day

of the seventh month

in a six-day town

the stores are shuttered

and window shades drawn.

It is another early Sunday morning

without a sun

and the people have abandoned

their everyday lives

for their faith

or an extra hour of sleep.

Chop Suey

(Edward Hopper, painting)

The streets are filled

with those who wonder

where they have been.

while the two of us

who eat Chop Suey

in Chinatown

at 11:00 pm

ponder what it will be like

at the end of time.

Nighthawks

(Edward Hopper, painting)

Nighthawks speak

in the dim of night

alight where few can hear

their conversations

with the dark—

plaintiff questions

without an answer or a sound.

February 2 -- B. J. Buckley

ANGELUS NOVUS,  Paul Klee, 1930/32

Last night I saw the angel in the pines,

nearly naked, shivering (icy rain

fell in torrents), her heavy wings sodden,

barred like an owl's, blown back and wide open

by merciless wind – as if hovering –

hands skin and bone, clenched talons, eyes glaring

gold. From her beautiful mouth, scorched singing:

grief and desolation, flayed bell ringing,

a body by voice cracked too far open

to ever be closed again. The sodden

branches were a wreath around her, a nest:

her owl eyes, gold, and blood wet on her breast,

this new angel, orphaned out of heaven,

into the mortal reign of history, fallen.

February 1 -- B.J. Buckley

MONDRIAN IN MONTANA

He'd be at home
in that scar-sharp stretch of fence
drawing pasture,
in the ache
of boundary: stone
against earth against
post against wire tensioned up

to breaking:
black barbs, red
dirt, yellow grass,
blue
(even the sky) squared
in a measured frame
of vision,
the canvas
snow
or cloud:
transcendent tyranny
of field,
corner,
line.

January 31 -- Cherise Wyneken

Sculpture Park  

A crisp and cloud-specked day

we walked the city through

to Oslo’s Frogner Park.

A pastime.

Instead we lit on life:

love of living,

faith in family.

One hundred fifty statuaries

by Gustav Vigeland.

 

Across the bridge

posed on a parapet,

bronze statue people move

and shout – celebrating joy.

Life cycles in bas relief

surround the central fountain.

Wrought iron children

climb wrought iron trees

frosted from the fountain’s spray.

They smile and climb in happy play.

 

A rise of stairs

through iron entrance gates

to granite people,

speaking pain and pleasure.

Speaking love.

Speaking children.

Speaking mother’s comfort

to a son who’s grieving.

 

Carved eyes

with pity, laughter, love.

Caressing hands, reaching out,

flecks of granite –

freckles on their flesh.

 

I could sail forever

on Norway’s fair fjords

and never find the wonder

Vigeland’s work affords.

 

*  TOUCHSTONES, Winston-Derek Publishers, Inc. (No longer publishing) 

 

 

http://www.authorsden.comcherisewyneken ;

http://www.examiner.com/poetry-in-oakland/cherise-wyneken

January 30 -- Anne Harding Woodworth

Gestation in Jade

 

The elephant’s sides, rounded

with circular latticework,

are windows into her belly,

where the infant looks out,

as if eager to leave the mother-ribs.

 

We lose serenity at times,

when the fill of an inner hollow

seems out of reach and uncarvable.

 

Diminutive tools play awkward

in the task of sculpting a uterine image.

 

But the unborn ask us to be patient,

prenatal duty being only slightly instinctive.

We eventually learn delicacy, knowing

a mother and her fetus are all of one piece.

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of five books of poetry and three chapbooks, with a fourth, The Last Gun, coming out in 2016. Her work is in published in journals at home (TriQuarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly) and abroad (Antigonish Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Crannog), print and on line (Innisfree Poetry Journal, Punchnel's). She lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

January 29 -- Anne Harding Woodworth

The Miniaturist, 1828

Sarah Goodridge (1788-1853)

 

When she heard his wife had died,

she painted a miniature self-breast,

(with which he was surely familiar),

he whose name had burst out huge

into the public consciousness.

 

He did not ask her to join him in the forum.

She was a mere painter of large things

made small, not so much insignificant

as causing the naked eye to squint.

 

She continued to live off the minuscule,

the pocketable, in her unimportant way,

but no customer gave her workspace the shiver

he had brought about among the paints.

 

Life without ecstasy left her woeful.

She feared he would destroy the miniature,

the two baby birds, craning, eager in their nest.

But history revealed he’d locked it in a drawer,

as if the quick click of a key could keep a secret.

 

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2006.235.74

Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of five books of poetry and three chapbooks, with a fourth, The Last Gun, coming out in 2016. Her work is in published in journals at home (TriQuarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly) and abroad (Antigonish Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Crannog), print and on line (Innisfree Poetry Journal, Punchnel's). She lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

January 28 --Alexis Fancher

WHITE FLAG

On Edward Hopper's painting, "Morning Sun, 1952” http://www.edwardhopper.net/morning-sun.jsp

No one paints loneliness like he does. Those half-clad women by the bed, on

the floor, hunched over, staring out the window, in profile or from behind, 

always clean lines, such worshipful light. The gas station in the middle of 

nowhere, estranged couples on the bright-lit porch after dark. Even the boats 

sail alone. And the diners. The hatted strangers, coming on to a redhead, a 

moody blonde, all of them losers, all of them desperate for a second chance. 

This morning the sunlight pried open my eyes, flooded our bedroom walls. I

sat alone, in profile on our bed in a pink chemise, knees drawn up, arms 

crossed over my calves, staring out the window. Desperate for you. No one 

paints loneliness like Edward Hopper paints me, missing you, apologies on 

my lips. Come back. Stand below my window. Watch me beg for a second 

chance. Downturned mouth, teary eyes, parted knees, open thighs, that famous 

shaft of Hopper light a white flag, if only you could see.