(after the painting by Paul Klee)
We are puppets
moved by strings
whichever way
the puppeteer
turns his hand
herky jerky
papier mâché
we obey
his silent words.
Cyclops
(after the painting by William Baziotes)
From its enclosure
at the zoo
the rhinoceros
wonders
why the one-eyed man
has lost his eye
and still can see
while the one-eyed man
wonders
why the rhinoceros
has a single horn
and still can fight
and even mate
with other creatures
having two.
Hurrah for the Red, White and Blue
(after the lithograph by Sam Francis)
What a country
It must be
to have a flag
frayed at the edges
perhaps
red and white
where blue
should be
in so few shapes
no states
no stars or stripes—
unfurl it
to the wind
and watch it fly.
Biography: Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey. His poems, many of them ekphrastic, appear in numerous international print and online journals, including Alba, Anastomoo, Crack the Spine, Counterexample Poetics, Clutching at Straws, Carcinogenic Poetry, ditch, Dead Snakes, Indigo Rising and Otoliths, plus more than a hundred others. His eighth chapbook, Convergence and Conversion, is due out shortly from The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press
