A woman I’m naming Belleflower 
in a cerulean gown, bell sleeves 
voluminous as wings, billowy skirt 

a parachute, ascends above trees 
into a starry midnight sky. Enraptured, 
eyes wide, arms open to all. 

Long hair royal blue, or is it a veil 
like one covering the hair 
of the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Below, a silhouetted archer aims 
his bow heavenward. He’s entombed 
in a putrid froth of hate and grievance

that opened an ulcer in the earth, spouting 
a molten sulfur flame. Will the woman 
deflect his arrows, or is she oblivious 

as I once was, to the toxic rage 
and grudge so many humans spew? 
Her one foot dangles close to earth, 

bare skin so pierceable. 

—Inspired by Konstantin Somov, Blue Bird (1918):

Blue Bird (watercolor painting, 1918)
by Russian Symbolism and Art Deco artist
Konstantin Somov (1869-1939)

Held by Kyiv National Museum of Art, Ukraine

(Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons on 23 August 2023)

Karen George

is the author of three poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). Her poem “Because every moment’s an occasion for attention” won the Slippery Elm Prize in poetry for 2022, and her short-story collection How We Fracture, which won the Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize, is forthcoming from Minerva Rising Press later this year.

Her work has appeared in Cultural Daily, I-70 Review, Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sheila-Na-Gig online, The Adirondack Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Indianapolis Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Her poetry reviews appear in Poetry Matters.

Author’s website: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Karen L. George: Three Poems in Cultural Daily (21 July 2022), inspired by three paintings by Andrea Kowch

⚡ Emily Carr: Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky (1932–35), ekphrastic poem by Karen George in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 6, January 2021)