Marjorie Maddox/Anna Lee Hafer

Switch

Click on the title to explore or download the PDF in the 2022 Buttonhook Press Broadside Series.

Switch is a verb that lights
the brain, gets the action done.
Or a noun—off/on, dark/bright

with what it knows. Verb recites
each epiphany brilliantly. Never outdone,
Switch is a verb that lights

location, flicks on insights
to illuminate in-/exteriors. The lone
lamp of noun—on/off, dark/bright—

it shines meaning, switches day and night,
distinctions cited. It recognizes its own
and acts. Switch is a verb that lights

the foggy brain. Its decisions brighten
dim rooms with up not down.
As noun, the off/on word knows dark/bright

but waits while Verb chooses what’s right.
Shrouded in shadow, Noun’s tone
is passive. Switch: best as verb that lights
up noun: off into on, dark into bright.

About the writer:
Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 13 collections of poetry— including Begin with a Question (Paraclete 2022), and the ekphrastic collaboration with Karen Elias Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts 2022)—the story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite), four children’s/YA books. In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, based on her daughter’s paintings, is forthcoming in 2023 (Shanti Arts).

About the artist:
Anna Lee Hafer is a studio artist based in the Philadelphia area who graduated from Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY. Previous experience includes studio exhibitions at Davison art gallery and Rochester contemporary art center in Rochester, NY, as well as published or forthcoming work in Still Point Arts Quarterly, The MacGuffin, The Penn Review, and The Ekphrastic Review.

Image: Switch by Anna Lee Hafer (contemporary). Acrylic/tempera paint, marker on stretched canvas. 36 x 24 inches. 2021. By permission.

Buttonhook Press 2022 Broadside Series: Find this Maddox/Hafer collaboration as well as others, including High Top and Metaphysical Vault and the new Maddox/Munz-Losch collaborations At the American Visionary Art Museum: Black Cat and At the American Visionary Art Museum: White Rabbit as PDFs in the 2022 Broadside Series from Buttonhook Press.

These projects were made possible, in part, through support from
Grayling and Wraith, a growth marketing company.