Woman II
(after the painting by Willem de Kooning)
 
It is my face in the picture
dripping flesh and scorn
an image of my self.
 
I know her name, can hear
her voice calling out
wailing
with the harshness
of a consonant
a sound I’ve heard
too many times.
 
I see what she must see
through nettled eyes
seeing me in a way
we both could understand—
 
she upon the wall
and I upon the earth
transfixed as one
by each other’s disregard.




Merz Picture 25A: The Star Picture
(after a collage by Kurt Schwitters)
 
A street  
littered
with cast-off dreams—
scraps of  advertisements,
tickets to a show
half-words
numbers out of place
perhaps (a star)
newspaper print
no longer in the news
whatever is at hand
was lost 
fragments
of a shattered past
scattered
right-side up         
and down
inanimate debris
cut and pasted
to be whole and born
again.




Premature Ossification of a Railroad Station
(after the painting by Salvador Dalí)
 
All of us have felt this way
when waiting for a train
or even the Messiah
rumbling slowly down the tracks
on old shoes
worn too many times
for too many miles
giving reason to think of grand designs
sins of the past
or those in a dark corner
of our minds
or plan the simplest day
as if the day will ever come
as if a plan were possible
the minutes passing endlessly
then coming to a sudden stop
hardened by the sun
and turned to bone—
still not 8:00 am
we wait as we have always done
for a train that will never come. 



© Neil Ellman

Each of the above poems is ekphrastic and is based on a work of modern art. In each case, the title of the poem is also the title of the original image.

Bio: Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey.  He has published more than 300 poems, many ekphrastic, in print and online journals throughout the world, as well as in seven chapbooks.