O:JA&L Poetry: All forms & styles
Americana: Ekphrasis
John Brantingham
Paul Klee’s Ins Nachbarhaus
Klee turns us into voyeurs here, spying
into the neighbor’s house, our lights presumably
doused so we can watch him silently.
He is a kind of prey that we are watching.
Or maybe Klee’s figure is trying
to slip into the neighbor’s house to see
what scandal or treasure there might be
for blackmail or for the taking.
It’s 1940, and Klee’s learned the hard
way what it means when neighbors watch neighbors,
the paranoia that creeps inside, terror
that scars over compassion so later
when it’s time for wholesale slaughter
they won’t think; they will just remember fear.
About the writer:
John Brantingham is currently and always thinking about radical wonder. He is a New York State Council on the Arts Grant Recipient for 2024, and he was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction.
Image: Ins Nachbarhaus by Paul Klee (1879-1940). Paste on paper on cardboard. 34.6 x 52.2 cm. 1940. Public domain.
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