A labyrinth, a stew of the universe’s intricate innards—lexicon of shape, color, pattern against backdrop of deep-space black speckled with pinprick-stars and a trinity of amoeba-globs: teal, maroon, copper. Spheres, trapezoids, cubes, parallelograms, each scored into integral parts—scaffolding that holds them together. I see a wheel, a stopwatch, compass rose, gears, a libretto, a scroll. Overlaying it all, glides livid-white lava, curled wisps of ribbons, snaking rivers, trails of vapor released—a spirit flow.

Is this creation, unleashed? The center of a black hole, gravitational singularity—a spin dense beyond belief?

* Publisher’s Note:

Movement (1935), an oil painting by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), is held by The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and may be viewed online at Kandinsky.net: https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-376.php

For details about Kandinsky and his work, including dozens of images, see the Guggenheim site: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/vasily-kandinsky

(Both links above were retrieved on 3 March 2022.)

Karen George

is the author of five chapbooks, and three collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). Her work is published in The Adirondack Review, The Ekphrastic Review, I-70 Review, Juniper, Poet Lore, Naugatuck River Review, Salamander, 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

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