Melissa is our hostess at dVerse Poets Pub and her prompt for us : For your Poetics prompt today, if you haven’t already guessed, I’d like to write ekphrastic poetry about Chagall’s art. Choose one of the paintings in this post, and compose a poem about it. For an added challenge, use descriptors in your poem to describe the details in the artwork and tell us about what they are, by telling us what they are not.

What This Is Not

This is not a village,though rooftops gather like memories refusing distance.

Not a horse, exactly—though something white and watchful leans toward tenderness.

Not fear,
though the eye stays open as if guarding a secret.

The woman kneeling is not praying,
only listening to what gentleness asks of hunger.

The green face
is not sorrow,
though longing lives in the curve of its mouth.

This is not dream either—
dreams dissolve.

This remains.

A place where love
does not walk in straight lines,
where moons lean sideways,
where the ordinary forgets itself enough to become wonder.

And perhaps—
this is not memory.

Only the strange country where memory chooses
to live.

Mr Linky :

https://www.blenza.com/linkies/links.php?owner=dversepoets&postid=18May2026&meme=12476


With love

— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫


If you want a reading, send me an email:

Afterlove-Voice@hotmail.com


© Maggie – The Afterlove Voice



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14 responses to “What This Is Not”

  1. ByteSizedStudio Avatar

    Very nicely done.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Maggie Avatar

      Thank you 😊

      Like

  2. kim881 Avatar

    You conveyed so much through ‘what this is not’, Maggie. I love the rooftops that ‘gather like memories refusing distance’ and ‘something white and watchful [that] leans toward tenderness’, and especially these lines:

    ‘A place where love
    does not walk in straight lines,
    where moons lean sideways’.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Maggie Avatar

    Thank you so much Kim 💜

    Like

  4. Kim Whysall-Hammond Avatar

    This is a fine poem, full of great phrasing. Especially “only listening to what gentleness asks of hunger”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Maggie Avatar

      Thank you 💜

      Liked by 1 person

  5. Björn Rudberg (brudberg) Avatar

    I love how much you managed by using negations, to that wonderful conclusion

    And perhaps—
    this is not memory.

    Only the strange country where memory chooses
    to live.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Maggie Avatar

      Thanks Bjőrn.

      Yes, it’s a strange country where memory live .

      Like

  6. thetigressawakens Avatar

    This line is tops ‘A place where love
    does not walk in straight lines,
    where moons lean sideways,
    where the ordinary forgets itself enough to become wonder.”

    Such a well crafted and unique intrepretation of the Chagall painting 🩵

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Maggie Avatar

      Thank you so much Tigress 💜

      Like

  7. erbiage Avatar

    i like what you’ve teased out of this with your nots. better than chegall methinkst

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Maggie Avatar

      I love photo prompts like this 😊

      Like

  8. Melissa Lemay Avatar

    Wow, Maggie, this is excellent. I find these lines particularly striking:

    “The woman kneeling is not praying,
    only listening to what gentleness asks of hunger.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Maggie Avatar

      Thank you so much Melissa 💜

      Liked by 1 person

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