This poem was written in response to Rattle’s March 2025 ekphrastic challenge, which featured E.E. King’s painting titled “Art Class Siblings — Under Skin.” I chose the poem’s title and three-stanza form to echo the rich layers of the triptych art and its subjects. The painting — like life — felt too deep, too complex to approach lightly in verse.
Strip down the anatomy of existence,
study it and transform it to art.
Naked truth starves us with meatless bones,
gaunt displays craving fleshed out life.
Lifeless shadows paint fanciful faces
while plump mortals emaciate desire,
yet all hush their hunger for lifeblood hues
humanity cannot strip from the shell.
Still, the bare model timelessly watches
as lofty studio walls covet and wait
a curated ambition, now mastered:
unique, impressionistic bequests
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