Elana Wolff
Bio:
Elana Wolff is a Toronto-based writer of poetry and creative nonfiction, a literary editor and designer and instructor of social art courses. Her poems and creative nonfiction pieces have been published widely in Canada and internationally, most recently in Taddle Creek Magazine, The Dalhousie Review, Riddle Fence, Eclectica, GRIFFEL, Wanderlust Review, and Eunoia Review. Her newest collection of poems is Swoon (Guernica Editions, 2020).
Black Bird-Sculpture
silkscreen monoprint
Inky, well-made, sinewy thin. The armature
discloses both the structure of a perfect bird & mount for what is missing.
S/he stands, it seems, in order to support trans-
figuration: coming through the rapture of the background: red & yellow, blue.
Latency a radiance of fundamental color.
The bird must be aware of its emergence out of wire lines:
Here the caw of incarnating: 1 2 1 2 1 2 1
discloses both the structure of a perfect bird & mount for what is missing.
S/he stands, it seems, in order to support trans-
figuration: coming through the rapture of the background: red & yellow, blue.
Latency a radiance of fundamental color.
The bird must be aware of its emergence out of wire lines:
Here the caw of incarnating: 1 2 1 2 1 2 1
This poem was inspired by Beryl Goering's painting, Crow Blues.
Acrylic Pigeon
Tawny feathers, bluish beak, an eye like a loose lorgnette. He could, the artist reckons, be a parrot: It’s her painting. To me, however, text in the foreground indicates a pigeon: an urban bird, a carrier, and this his dark epistle. Words encoded, as in poems.
Perhaps the swath of textured red—masking half the canvas—is a transmutation of blood. Touch it and be carried back to the blow: the leaking scene, the fire freed, a silent conflagration. After-ache encrypted in inchoate pidgin script.
Perhaps the swath of textured red—masking half the canvas—is a transmutation of blood. Touch it and be carried back to the blow: the leaking scene, the fire freed, a silent conflagration. After-ache encrypted in inchoate pidgin script.
This poem was inspired by Wendy Weaver's painting, Is It A Parrot?
Prime & Shiny
A cardinal descends The mate arrives on prey with to stake herwings of filmy claim. He waves sequined sun, he her off—a rips the glitter, flick of his severs the head— tail. She flutters prime & shiny, up to abig-eyed head—snaps sprinkler head and the torso in lingers ... Think of half. Beak the him as magical, perfect truncheon. He the garden greening, hacks the exoskeleton, all etheric—shades it resists like & veils of a living thing. primavera, dragonfly consumed And we—you’ve to a few joined me at hard shards. He the window—gawk. lifts the last We’ve dreamt of and brings it food—soft comfort to the missus dishes: kitcheree & in a kiss— syllabub. Nothing tough hov’ring like a as dragonfly in-death. hummingbird above her—