I am happy to report that Editor Reagan Prior, of Paper Dragon, sent me an acceptance to their upcoming horror-themed issue 8. Paper Dragon is the literary journal of Drexel University's MFA program. I have been rejected there a couple of times, but I had a feeling that the poem I submitted was right for the interpretation of "horror" in their submission guidelines, which asked for "creepy vibes." It was gratifying to find that my ekphrastic take on Magritte's The Lovers was just what they had in mind.
This poem was an assignment in my prose poetry workshop at The Forever Workshop. The exercise was to note down my reactions to a work by my favorite surrealist painter. I love Magritte but didn't remember this painting. Nevertheless, the moment I saw it, I found I had a lot of thoughts.
Among other things, I enjoyed the challenge of imagining how the lovers would experience one another if they never took off their face coverings while courting. Keeping in mind Magritte's dim view of modern capitalism, I took note of the opposition between his office-appropriate attire and her bare arm. Pursuing the symbolism of their covered faces, I imagined them appraising one another in terms of their own desires for security (hers) and sensuality (his) without regard for each other as individuals. I also imagined the feeling of French kissing through cloth. Finally, I projected them into the future and imagined what would happen when, over time, the veils slipped. I did this partly because the veils, with their wet-drapery marble look, evoke death, and this seems to counterpose a memento mori against their love. I wanted to pursue them to their deaths to reflect on this aspect of the painting as well.
In short, I imagined not very nice people having a not very nice but perfectly ordinary relationship, only with the not-knowing at the start of all relationships physically present as the face coverings. In the end, they led not very nice but perfectly ordinary lives and died. And this was sufficiently creepy and melancholy for the Paper Dragon team. I look forward to seeing my poem in the issue 🙂
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