Greatest Hits Gallery--Rachel H.

Rachel H's poems, as she puts it, have turned sparse this term, as she filters through the over-stimulus that can result from ekphrasis. Or as she navigates the double-distance that can result from writing about an already static image. Her ekphrastics on photographs show both this sparseness and a kind of delicate attention to energy, especially two on dance. The first responds to a photograph of a couple dancing the polka. The second poem is also about dance, though, I'm not certain, from the same image.



Of Polak dancing with his twirling Polka

His still steps stutter now
as she twirls
a motion
never ceasing, always filling
skirts with air—
so fanning
his heart, a flaming polonaise brilliante
into a new allegro
under the pocket
of his blue ironed shirt.

Uyghur Dance

Her hands dance
on twisting wrists
and she
pivots
every joint
with a grace of hummingbird
delicacy and murmuring speed.