I was drawn to their seductive luminescence, 
                    sweet kisses, and the tang of salt. 
When a breaker’s toppled the swimmer, 
you can smell and taste shipwrecks under the surf, 
glimpse cities a little out of focus, like toy castles in a fish tank, 
whole snow cities chiseled by the winds. Not you, 
to the end unsmiling and unable to fly, no, it wasn’t you, 
the flophouse prince who brought mountains 
	of uncooked flesh wrapped in folds 
of his own loose skin: but it was something, all right, 
those sad fake flowers, crudely textured cast-off rope, 
shriveled and unwanted dugs, their anger spewed, 
whatever strained to be reborn, escaping 
           		shards of quietus, shattering 
calm, shredding the landscape, a bone rattling a bell; 
echoes that fade away. 
			I sank my hands up to their wrists 
in that sadness, denying the darkness access, 
                    finding little in the empty wound, 
a spreading of cold fingers probing shadows, 
            scarecrow phantoms, and fluttering tatters. 

*Publisher’s Note:

Epigraph translates as, “You will ask: where are the lilacs? / and the poppy-covered metaphysics?” See Pablo Neruda’s poem “I’m Explaining a Few Things” as translated by Michael Simms in Vox Populi (link retrieved on 8 January 2023):
https://voxpopulisphere.com/2019/08/07/pablo-neruda-im-explaining-a-few-things/

Charles D. Tarlton

is a retired university professor of political theory who lives in Old Saybrook, Connecticut with his wife, Ann Knickerbocker (an abstract painter), and a Standard Poodle named Nikki. He is the author of three books of prosimetra published by KYSO Flash Press: Touching Fire: New and Selected Ekphrastic Prosimetra (2018), Get Up and Dance (2019), and Carmody & Blight: The Dialogues (2019).

His most recent book, Peaches and Roses: Episodes in the Navajo Degradation, was released in January 2021 by Silver Bow Publishing (New Westminster, British Columbia). He also has a poetry e-chapbook published in the 2River series, La Vida de Piedra y de Palabra: Improvisations on Pablo Neruda’s Macchu Picchu; an experimental prosimetrum in Lacuna entitled Five Episodes in the Navajo Degradation; “The Rock in a Jar,” an extended prose poem in several parts in Gone Law 32; and “The Turn of Art,” a short prosimetrical drama pitting Picasso against Matisse, in Fiction International.

Tarlton has been writing poetry and flash fiction since 2006, and his work is published in numerous literary journals and magazines: Abramelin, Atlas Poetica, Barnwood, Blackbox Manifold (UK), Blue and Yellow Dog, Book Ends Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Contemporary Haibun Online, Cricket Online Review, Dark Matter, Fiction International, Haibun Today, Ilanot Review, Inner Art Journal, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Jack Magazine, KYSO Flash, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, London Grip, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Muse India, Palette Poetry, Peacock Journal, Prune Juice, Randomly Accessed Poetics, Rattle, Red Booth Review, Red Lights, Review Americana, Ribbons, Shampoo, Shot Glass, Simply Haiku, Six Minute Magazine, Sketchbook, Skylark, Spirit Wind Gallery, Tallow Eider Quarterly, The American Aesthetic, The Ekphrastic Review, The Houston Literary Review, tinywords, Tipton, Unbroken Journal, Undertow Tanka Review, and Ink, Sweat, and Tears.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Artifact With Steam (2019) by Ann Knickerbocker, ekphrastic tanka prose in the e-collection Get Up and Dance featured in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019)

⚡ Featured Author Charles D. Tarlton, with six of his ekphrastic tanka prose and an interview with Jack Cooper, in KYSO Flash (Issue 6, Fall 2016)

⚡ Notes for a Theory of Tanka Prose: Ekphrasis and Abstract Art, a scholarly paper by Tarlton residing in PDF at Ray’s Web; originally published in Atlas Poetica (Number 23, pages 87-95)

⚡ Three American Civil War Photographs: Ekphrasis by Tarlton in Review Americana (Spring 2016)

⚡ Simple Tanka Prose for the Seasons, a quartet by Tarlton in Rattle (Issue 47: Tribute to Japanese Forms, Spring 2015)