Cleopatra - beloved by her father

Behold. Cleopatra.
The richest woman in the world holds a deadly asp
to her bare nipple.
Ouch! Touche!
She had searched the Egyptian dynasty for the
perfect poison to give Anthony - the Playboy.
She used subjugated subjects for her trials.
Some lived, some died . like you and me.
So Cleopatra came to milk the asp for its venom
that would be Anthony's last
She stood atop a block of petrified wood
outside of Ephesus where she and Anthony after they wed
honeymooned in the past.
as
Paul spoke in the amphitheatre
of
other worldly things
instead of
the asp that then struck Cleopatra dead.

Falling Swan

“Falling Swan”

The river bucks its bed, rising erect

upon its flowing fork. What is a swan

that’s not a river? Rocks, flows, plucks, drops, drifts

all wriggling in in the temporal delight

of gravity defiance. Strings take flight!

As when waves break into misty insects,

the whole seems to split suddenly and fall

back into a familiar bed, but then,

the reclined body hovers, suspended,

beyond angelic midair river swan.

[This is based on a still from a video clip, viewable here:
http://www.openingceremony.us/entry.asp?pid=3238&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Very%20Short%20List%20-%20Daily&utm_campaign=VSL]

blue boy

the painter gave me my brother's face
i was always running in the woods
scruffian mudflap
knee scowl tree tromp



why they gussied me up
and the painter stole sky for my cloth
i'll never know



i was a force of nature
not this delicate aristocrat
they stole my unborn brother's face
shined me beyond recognition
and made me into a boy
stole the sky and moved all the dirt to the back
what kind of picture is that?

This week's prompt: Ekphrasis (4/18-4/24)

Ekphrasis is the dramatic description
of a visual artwork in the medium of words.

This week, choose a work of art as a starting point. Then write a poem
to respond, describe, deepen, reflect, explore, react, explain, transcend...

If possible, post the image with your poem (using the insert image function—
the button in the toolbar that looks like a tiny landscape painting), or post a link to the image
in your comments or as part of your post.

The work pictured here is by Donald Tarahonich.

Keywords: poem, ekphrasis, your name.