Well, you had a cat that looked like Grace Jones, all crazy cheekbones and hard angles. Midnight coat and hungry eyes. You were half wild yourself, exactly as you’d warned me. If I didn’t believe you at first, then, yes, I guess, I confess, I was impressed or maybe fooled by the still waters and forgot how deep they run in mirrors. I was all about glow and spectacle but even so, only looking for a safe space to land. You were a slower simmer than cheap glitter and I should have known better. You told me straight up, it ain’t me, babe, and I followed anyways. And so, now I know. How I would always find the undertow or the oncoming train, even if you were the dark horse I never saw coming.

*Publisher’s Note:

Horse and Train (casein tempera on hardboard, 1954) by Canadian painter Alex Colville (1920-2013) is held by the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

For additional details and a large photograph of the painting, see Horse and Train 1954, from “Alex Colville: Life and Work” by Ray Cronin, Art Institute of Canada.

Lorette C. Luzajic

is from Toronto, Canada and writes prose poetry, flash, and other forms of little stories. Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, including Gyroscope, Free Flash Fiction, Bright Flash, Club Plum, Red Eft, and Indelible, among others. Her story The Neon Raven won first place in a writing challenge at MacQueen’s Quinterly, and her work has been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her most recent of six collections of prose poems are Pretty Time Machine (2020) and Winter in June (2021). Some of her works have been translated into Urdu.

Lorette is founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review (established 2015), a journal devoted to writing inspired by art. She is also an award-winning visual artist, with collectors in 30 countries from Estonia to Qatar. Visit her at: www.mixedupmedia.ca

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Two Must-Read Books by The Queen of Ekphrasis, commentary in MacQ-9 (August 2021) by Clare MacQueen, with links to additional resources

⚡ Featured Author: Lorette C. Luzajic at Blue Heron Review, with two of her prose poems (“Disappoint” and “The Piano Man”); plus “Poet as Pilgrim,” a review of Pretty Time Machine by Mary McCarthy (March 2020)

⚡ Fresh Strawberries, an ekphrastic prose poem in KYSO Flash (Issue 11, Spring 2019), nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize