POETRY PAGE
The Hope Lives: Art for ALS - Research Renderings Wine Tasting & Ekphrastic Poetry event was Sunday, May 18th at the San Francisco Women Artists Gallery. Please help me in thanking our sponsors for this event: SFWA Gallery, Corner 103 Tasting Room, ALS TDI and International Encaustic Artists
Guest Poets: Dean Rader, Angelica Recierdo, Sarah Rosenthal, Kim Shuck and Rebekah Wolman shared their beautifully penned poetry. On this page you can enjoy time reading the poems alongside the artwork that inspired it.
Cellular Study No. 2 by Caryl St. Ama
THE EARTH IS BODIES. BODIES ARE MORTAL. THE EARTH IS MORTAL:
Dean Rader
ϕ the dots [like blue Pollack]
ϕ the mitochondria again
ϕ the rivers [red]
ϕ the body
ϕ nothing redacted
ϕ the needle
ϕ the landscape [lunar]
ϕ line four of this poem
ϕ the excitotoxicity
ϕ art picks up where nature ends [Chagall]
ϕ the sky in reverse
ϕ the endoplasmic reticulum
ϕ the poem I meant to write
ϕ the little craters [like melanoma]
ϕ the machine, the lines, the beeping [endless]
ϕ the body
ϕ the cellular sinescence [strocytes] [glial]
ϕ what I wanted to say
ϕ the white field [Ryman]
ϕ where in the blur your eyes go
ϕ where death sleeps like a black fish on the bottom of the sea
ϕ the axonal transport defects
ϕ a whisper, a wave crash, a fire beneath moon wash
ϕ what this poem should be doing
ϕ the purpose of art [washing the dust of daily life off our souls] [Picasso]
ϕ the empty bed
ϕ oligodendrocyte impairment
ϕ the poem as a failed attempt at the impossible
ϕ the opposite of solace
ϕ the body
ϕ my body
ϕ the peace that passeth
ϕ a cello, a swallow, a ray of light
ϕ once upon a time
ϕ a hand upon an arm, a hand upon a chest, a hand
ϕ infinite music, endless light, unending canvas
ϕ the peace, the body, the poem, the empty bed
An Interrupted Dance by Regina B. Quinn
Inflamed in Reverie
By Angelica Recierdo
Left with my own brain
and some mistaken river,
pockmarked stems
grace a bed of dissonance.
I want to leave beloved before my own music
plays to unsung feet.
And so we marvel at the buds,
love them only on the day before spoil,
when time is kind and encaustic.
Dry day of no sinking chair
and full stunning, partnered sense.
Take me to the bench at the end of the banks
where magnolias inflame in reverie.
After “An Interrupted Dance” by Regina Quinn
Extinguish by Joan Stolpen
Extinguish
Written in response to Extinguish by Joan Stolpen (encaustic on panel)
Is heaven a place
is the place a
painting if a place
does it hold only
the lovely if edges
dissolve is that lovely
or excruciating is there
anything lovely about a
persistent ache if the
ache permeates the painting
does it enter the
beholder’s eye is this
solace
Is heaven the hours
you spend applying color
to a panel do
color and form speak
of heaven is heaven
the same as sky
is sky in the
beholder’s eye is ocean
is chemise pebble fog
gold filagree is it
firmament a place if
not where did she
go
If a photo is
imperceptible in a painting
is it there or
missing like a person
is it hiding like
a private ache or
hide and seek did
the process of making
reveal the image didn’t
serve or served as
impetus only to be
covered by pastel and
molten wax
Does the beholder’s eye
open to befriend the
painting does the painting
do the befriending is
trust built a conversation
extended an ache revealed
by blue of wild
iris gold of finest
filigree slate and rust
fog grey here yet
dissolving in endless mourning
can this conversation provide
solace
How are we marked
by missing what marks
do we make in
our missing how does
missing manifest in the
marks how does making
them reveal how amplify
our missing is it
ours or is it
ocean we enter pebble
we pick up chemise
we don fog opening
to sky
In the Tangle of a Human Body
A poem by Kim Shuck
In the body of my friend
Brambles of neurons
Catch and
Go silent
Heft of cell the
Corona of
Dendrites spread like fingers
Like the arms of sun stars these
Long and reaching cells
Elegant and
Poised until they
Wither in
Stained slides in
Microphotographs
As the habit of
Communication
Built over decades is
Dismantled a
Strange and
Unfamiliar beauty
Sings self
ALS Research photographs for
artistic inspired creations in the exhibition
Message System by Roxane Mayeur
Organic
Form ever follows function.
That was Louis Sullivan
"father of the skyscraper"
on its evolution.
For Charles Darwin,
evolution's father,
function followed form
as new improvisations on
the theme of beak and blossom
competed to survive.
In this painting with the reaching
and the diving,
branch tips striving,
taproot divining,
sky reflecting water, water sky,
if form follows function
the need to connect
sends tentacles stretching.
If the reverse, the tentacles dance
to discover themselves
a system for sending
essential messages across
the gaps at crucial junctions
along a path.
Say form stalks function.
Say form and function flirt and fall
in love, become like partners
on a dance floor so well in synch
that following and being followed
are illusions.
Say then they stumble
from exhaustion.
Say function wears form out.
Form frays, abandons function.
Each one's betrayed.
Each leaves the other haunted.
There is no formula then
for their flailing, for their failing.
There is no formula for their falling out.
—after "Message System," encaustic and pigments on mulberry paper, by Roxane Mayeur
Rebekah Wolman, May 2025
Along a path
I count a dozen different grasses,
each releasing seeds from
different forms of bell and tassel
on their stalks.