EKPHRASIS: Art & Poetry

Edited by Liz Blood

Ekphrasis is an ongoing series joining verse and visual art. Here, poet Najah-Amatullah responds to Kalyn Fay Barnoski’s weaving.

Najah-Amatullah is a lifelong writer and performer. She teaches secondary English language arts in Oklahoma City and is pursuing a master’s in literature from the University of Central Oklahoma. She is working on a social media- and poetryenhanced secondary curriculum and a video podcast about teaching.

Kalyn Fay Barnoski is a Cherokee artist and musician from Tulsa. She received her BFA from Rogers State University in 2012, an MA from The University of Tulsa in 2016, and is in her final year of an MFA in Printmaking at the University of Arkansas School of Art. Her work focuses on the intersections of Cherokee/Indigenous epistemologies within her personal experiences and the experiences of broader community.

Boxes and Quilts

to warm the body to warm the heart so the mind is able to flex into multiple consciousnesses to cover the bed before the hearth to unfold a home anywhere

we’ve never weaved together the green of our Native prairie grass with the green of our Southern cotton fields

never threaded the blue of a Pacific Island sky to the hue of an African canopy

never sewn Aztec maize around Arab gold coins to patch the hole of the ocean

never braided an orange sunrise to a violet sunset

There has always been enough thread.

square crates for holding hearts captive for containing scrolls that would contaminate voice boxes transporting what had been out of the way of what would be

unable to see through cardboard that what would be only boxed in what might be what might be

a quilt to join holy bodies to align like minds to bond a team that works to protect the rest of those who protect the rest

Kalyn Fay Barnoski, hope, a life., 2020, woven broadsheets (broadsheet 1: A system in which Black bodies, Brown bodies, any Person of Color is vilified and murdered is inherently wrong evil.; broadsheet 2: KEEP HOPE ALIVE!), acrylic, waterbased spray paint, 48” x 40”