Bio: Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections. He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes. MEH’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in Cola, The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Pangyrus, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and The Worcester Review among others. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at http://www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.
Website: www.MEHPoeting.com
Twitter: @MEHPoeting
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MEHPoeting
*Author’s Notes: Below are five ekphrastic poems, four from art, one from a newspaper article. Below are links to the primary works for a visual alongside the writings.
• Arbol de la Vida [https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4597549] • Flora, Meeting House Hill Cemetery, Princeton/Enslaved by Governor Moses Gill and Rebecca Boylston Gill [https://issuu.com/danforthartmuseum/docs/dan_juried_catalog_2023 on page 27] • Woman Who Once Had Wings [https://issuu.com/danforthartmuseum/docs/dan_juried_catalog_2023 on page 22] • Morning Sun - Originally published in Long Exposure (now defunct). [https://news.artnet.com/art-world/edward-hopper-morning-sun-jo-1895972] • October 19, 2022 [Title from Washington Post article https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/20/slavery-link-daniel-smith-dead/] Arbol de la Vida (Tree of Life) photograph, 1976 Ana Mendieta Havah—Mother Eve—graft yourself into the Tree of your contentment. coat yourself with the earth from which he was drawn, the loam you hope to avoid. tangle yourself with vines, long grasses. perforate your back with Her bark, eyes closed, ears open to the still-soft voice inside—the feminine whispers no husband, no serpent can penetrate. in surrender, raise your arms at right angles and wait—She will place Her fruit into your palms. Flora, Meeting House Hill Cemetery, Princeton/Enslaved by Governor Moses Gill and Rebecca Boylston Gill digital inject print on metal, 2022 Scarlett V. Hoey
Woman Who Once Had Wings gently clasped in a weathered hand—cracked knuckles at an awkward angle—a single feather traces your naked spine. the long, bone-white rachis thickens to quill, black and white vanes shimmering. the whole length aching to taste the wind. the sun-warmed fingers of your other hand reaches back to aid this remnant regrafting. silver rings—moved to a new finger—display the choice which allowed the sun-spots, wrinkles, stretch marks down your neck, your back, your once cherubic checks. after Woman Who Once Had Wings #2, by Suzanne Gainer, archival inject print, 2023 Morning Sun “daylight is nobody’s friend” – Anne Sexton her story is plain as his blush smudged collar. familiar as her ruddy jaw clenched around the truth he thinks hidden. we know the strand found slithering across his sleeve did not stray from her careless bun— the reason she stares between rays of light behind a glassless window. he will come through the door we cannot see, kiss her cheek, pat her ass. he will return with an honest smile, expect her pink slip to melt beneath his touch. but as he enters her frame, will she hold her breath, pretend— once again— to be more than his selection part time? for now stained sheets—washed and returned to creased corners— scream beneath bloodless legs, bound at fetal angles. we can’t see what rests behind her left elbow, beside her unseen, growing thigh— the totem of the secret she holds within, the choice she must make over his one true desire. After Morning Sun (1952) by Edward Hopper. Originally published in Long Exposure. October 19, 2022 “Daniel Smith, one of the last children of enslaved americans, dies at age 90.” read that headline again. once more. check your watch or phone to confirm today’s date. consider the age of your parents, grandparents. do the obvious math after reading the headline again. register your confusion. how this fact bends your perception of time. like learning McDonald’s and Auschwitz both began serving millions the same month. how Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr, and Barbara Walters share a birth year. how the final use of the French guillotine was four months after the release of Star Wars: A New Hope. how I was born in 1980— a year before the last death some are comfortable calling a lynching. “…one of the last children of enslaved americans” lived through the eras your parents, grandparents have told me to forget as part of the distant past. *Title from Washington Post article https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/20/slavery-link-daniel-smith-dead/
Fevers of the Mind 