Ekphrastic South
Stephen Hundley
Do something tarnished. Let your metal lips open to sip the mayor’s bottle smash. Never you mind how that statue of Saddam, so memorably, so pliably slid from the spindly steel poles of its legs, or how it was dragged from its marble pedestal and pillaged for souvenirs.
Never you mind the obelisk in Mississippi, towed to a gravesite in the woods. Is that a grin? You’re catching fire, Robert, in this light. Your cape is burning and cupping the champagne. Your horse’s mouth is sealed shut. I’m hanging from the oak limbs, to look you in the eye. It’s impeccable. It’s perfect, petrified and molded into the image of a man;
Robert bronzing on his warsteed, looking for his warbride, traveling to nowhere in the city park. He’s new. The trees are new too, wrapped in water bags, swaddled in straw. Robert, the footpaths are losing their battle with the leaves. Large goose turds beset us. Robert, you will never gleam like you do today.
Stephen Hundley is the author of The Aliens Will Come to Georgia First (University of North Georgia Press, 2023). His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Carve, Cream City Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MA from Clemson, an MFA from the University of Mississippi, and is currently completing a PhD in English at Florida State University.