Ken Pobo Re-Imagines Ernst and Carrington

Kenneth Pobo’s poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Mudfish, The Cider Press Review, The Fiddlehead, and Hawaii Review, among literary journals. His most recent collection is Placemats, published by Eastern Point Press. He teaches literature and creative writing at Widener University in Chester, PA, and in 2007 received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. In these poems, Pobo re-imagines the work of two towering figures in Surrealist painting, Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington. The couple, who met in London in 1937, lived together in France until separated by WWII.

                                 Pastoral, Leonora Carrington, 1950

PASTORAL

You hover above a thin white blanket.

Wind

easily bends the birch nearby

yet it stands—you envy it.  You’re

growing unable to tell human

from animal, your owl eyes,

a hand like a fox paw.  You want

the world to stay still, to stop

that endless turning—

that would mean your death,

everyone’s death.  You say let it spin,

which it does, as if trying to weave

something wonderful.

 

The Elephant of Celebes
Max Ernst, 1921

THE ELEPHANT OF CELEBES

An elephant feeds a mirage

to a wooden floor. 

The entire Industrial Revolution

fits into the beast.  Knock

on its black shell.  It feels nothing. 

If you get eaten, you’ll relax

inside the belly.  Headless,

a woman tries to speak the poem

she wrote about loss that she told

to fish swimming overhead,

but they swim away.  An orange

remark, you crave a sunny walk

beyond a blue pergola.  The elephant

remembers a savannah

and a graham-cracker brown river. 

This is how it will be—you looking

for blue, the animal looking

for you looking for blue.