Issue 2: A Visit

Welcome to Issue 2 of Metphrastics! We’re inspired this month by poems about visiting the Met and consequential “visitations,” encounters, and acts of looking. We have poems by Marion Brown, Nico Bryan, Kate Copeland, Will Cordeiro, Elliot Figman, Patricia Kusumaningtyas, Seth Leeper, Millie Percival, Amanda Quaid, and Tim Shaner responding to works by Edgar Degas, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Auguste Renoir, Mary Frank, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, plus ancient statues from Indonesia and Rome. Our featured poet is Rosebud Ben-Oni. We hope you enjoy this issue! Submissions are open for our Spring Issue. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to support our work, please visit Donate.

Note: to comply with copyright law, some artworks are not pictured on this site. Please click the link below the author’s name to view the work.

Judith with Head of Holofernes
Will Cordeiro

Her coy, half-lidded gaze suggests she’s just about to head 
off somewhere else, but—for the moment—she strikes an antimasque
tableaux, the fancy fête now done, simpering for the looker-on in dead
pan. Each stroke’s 

             high finish means she’s finished with her task.
One dainty finger’s on the sword’s clean hilt,
raised in salute; another finger toys his locks, his beard’s curled hairs…
Her irony is undercut—just look!—by the rakish tilt 
of a courtly hat: its doll-like plume and devil-may-care.
Holofernes stares heavenward, quite undeceived,
and plays his part. His plump, inviting mouth is parted
however slightly               as if groaning in relief;
his face, a john’s pale stoic mask
or a hardened martyr’s.
Her face seems porcelain,
an eggshell overdone for Easter; his features filled with shadows 
from flawed depths. Deflated, his visage 
could have been the mask she’s left some just-past-midnight cotillion in,
the afterparty when
her domino’s been swiftly dropped.
A double for the dominant laughter of a Salome. 
Her game, her flirty 
gamine stance, is rueful—obviously a ruse, as this insouciant roué
turns la belle dame sans merci.
That too-posed look looks back, 
and gives away
that fact that nothing will give way. O, assertive wayward
pause. And yet her shirt-cuff’s open sash of sable’s blunt:
a sly pink crevice
urging anyone who’s capable
to suffer through
one’s gaze in reverie. 
—But don’t 
(though every mercantile up-and-comer wants this portrait)
succumb to this loose Medusa, this painted lady’s fainting act.
That gauzy low-cut 
bodice reveals yet
veils its embedded
tricks, perhaps: flat-
chested since young
boys must act 
in every play—though, 
in fact, you are the one who’s being played.

Your look, your lurking will betray you. For every courtesan’s fidelity is double-edged.


Will Cordeiro has published work in 32 Poems, AGNI, Bennington Review, Pleiades, and The Threepenny Review. Will is the author of Trap Street (Able Muse, 2021) and Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, 2024) as well as coauthor of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024).

Judith with the Head of Holofernes
Lucas Cranach the Elder, German, ca. 1530

Pantoublock with Copper and Fragmentation
Seth Leeper

after Mary Frank’s Persephone

Seth Leeper is a queer poet. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter, The Journal, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Salamander, and Sycamore Review. He holds an M.S. in Special Education from Pace University and B.A. in Creative Writing and Fashion Journalism from San Francisco State University. He is a candidate in the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Randolph College. He teaches drop-in and virtual workshops for Brooklyn Poets.

an anger like pyroclastic flow
Patricia Kusumaningtyas

i always return to gallery 247 to see what they stole from us.
a headless buddha greets me by the door.

(do these tourists know
that he is made
from the volcanic rocks of mount merapi?)

remember that drive down magelang;
palm trees bearing the weight of ashes
endless chores
sweeping balconies like sisyphus
a reminder of the unrelenting want of the earth
humans are too meek to refuse.

meanwhile, buddha sits clean in manhattan

knowingly, separated, disappeared from his birthright
a gift from [insert dutch name here]
donated by [insert japanese name here]
and independence day wasn’t our independence:
the smiling general sold his soul in exchange for a throne in the west.
and where is marsinah? munir? wiji thukul?
who will write the song for the bengawan solo in ‘65, unsung, flowing red with blood?
we have mourned from merapi, from krakatau,
to ‘04 aceh and ‘06 jogja.

in a dream i walked into 247 to an empty room.
none of the buddhas were there.
white linen covering the furniture,
nothing to see but silence.

in manhattan, i wish i was clean

Patricia Kusumaningtyas is an Indonesian writer. Their poetry and prose have been published in Roi Fainéant Press, Major 7th Magazine, Dead End Zine, Poetry is a Team Sport, HaluHalo Journal, and Culinary Origami Journal. Her music, film, and art criticism have been featured in Our Home in the Dark, ACV CineVue, and Speed of Sound Magazine, and she organizes events with the Indonesian Film Forum New York. In her waking life, she works in tech and lives in Brooklyn.

Seated Buddha Amitabha
Indonesia (Java) ca. first half of the 9th century

A Visit
Elliot Figman

He shows up in a suit, carrying a bunch of flowers, everyone wondering, Who is this guy? 

I need to pay more attention to what’s right in front of me, care more about those closest to me. 

The food is awful, but we sit down to eat. I’ve snitched a pear from someone in Sales, which I’ll return 
when the spirit moves me. 

The enemy is winning in the court of public opinion. The game is lost. Creatures at our door. 

He and his wife have been let go by the school district. They’re teaching long distance, which can’t be fun. The longer I talk with them, the more I listen. They don’t have nearly enough saved for the future. Who will help out?

I need to get to know everyone by name, everyone who moves with a modicum of gusto, able to name things that aren’t really here,  evanescent, or something more basic, a hand reaching across a table, a glass of water, a vale of tears.

Elliot Figman is a poet and the Executive Director Emeritus of Poets & Writers, Inc.
His book of poems, Big Spring, was published by Four Way Books in 2003. 

A Bouquet of Chrysanthemums
Auguste Renoir, 1881

Woman Seated Beside a Vase of Flowers
Marion Brown

The docent finds her dowdy, but I embrace
the French woman whose kids moved out.
Wrapped tight in brown, the tone of her face,
she turns a cold shoulder to the bristling
bouquet that crowds her arm. Display
attracts pollinators humming with sex.
These stiff pinwheels are fall flowers, the last
blue fireworks. Pitcher half-emptied, hat

cocked, where next? Bemused, she leans
her cheek against a loose hand covering her
mouth, that twist of lemon. Why broadcast?
Brown becomes her, confident in dull. Jostled
by knife-point mums, a woman unnamed
hugs herself and stares beyond the frame.

Marion Brown lives in Yonkers, NY. Her two chapbooks, Tasted and The Morning After Summer, were published by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Guesthouse, Liber, Kestrel, Cider Press Review, and On the Seawall. She serves on the Advisory Committee of Slapering Hol Press and the National Council of Graywolf Press.

*this poem was originally published in Big City Lit. in 2008.

A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?)
Edgar Degas, 1865

A Job: Burlington Books (1989)
Tim Shaner

On lunch break, a quick bite and I slip off to the MET, this time
it’s “Young Lady
in 1866.”

How we float together, hovering in pink
p e r p e t u u m.

And then the dash
back to the stacks
on Madison Ave.


Tim Shaner is the author of Radio Ethiopia: Testimony of a Development Brat (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024), Noch Ein at the Stein: A Poetic Essay on Beer, Conversation, and Hippycrits (Spuyten Duvil, 2022), I Hate Fiction: A Novel (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018) and the poetry collection Picture X (Airlie Press, 2014). His work has appeared in Periodicities: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, Broken Lens Journal, Exquisite Pandemic, Juxtapositions, Plumwood Mountain: A Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics, Colorado Review, Jacket, and elsewhere. In Eugene, he founded and hosted A New Poetry Series (2008-2014), curated The Windfall Reading Series (2017-2019), and is currently hosting the Studio 7 Reading Series. He is a graduate of SUNY-Buffalo’s Poetics Program and teaches writing at Lane Community College.

Young Lady in 1866
Edouard Manet, 1866

When I Am Old
Amanda Quaid

When I am old, I’ll go
to Dionysus, drape myself
in chiton, gauzy gold,
wreathe peonies, adonis
in my silver hair and part
my lips to taste the incense
in the air. I’ll lead you there,
my lone breast spilling
from my dress, face scraped,
shoulder scarred, my good arm
broken off by illness, man
or accident. Body in crisis,
I’ll make haste to Dionysus.

Amanda Quaid is a New York-based poet and co-editor of Metphrastics. Her work was awarded the 2023 Bridport Prize and her debut collection, No Obvious Distress, is forthcoming from John Murray Press in July 2025.

Marble statue of an old woman
Roman, 14–68 CE

Although this statue is known familiarly as The Old Market Woman, it probably represents an aged courtesan on her way to a festival of Dionysus, the god of wine.

Black Abrstraction
Nico Bryan

so full
of scale
it’s almost
nauseating
two lines
rendered in
obscurity
one bent
one perched
brilliant across
allover expanse
on a horizon
shifting
depictions
make me
see shapes
that door
the ambiguous
black
impossible
to define
pose for me
please

Nico Bryan (she/her) is a writer from sun-shiny Florida currently residing in New York City. Her poems have been anthologized and featured in Iterant, Fifth Wheel Press, Bullshit Lit, and so on. Her chapbook, Slow Devotion Slash Open, was published in 2023 with Bottle Cap Press. She currently serves as Vice President of the board for No, Dear and is a co-editor for shit wonder.

Black Abstraction
Georgia O'Keeffe, 1927

1899
Millie Percival

Hands trembling in awe as I guide
Another lily into its resting place.
This is true peace,
To capture and ensnare the serene,
And cast their image into eternity
Of shades of blue and vermillion green.

The oils stain the tips of my fingers
Solvent bulging at the back of my throat,
Shades of nature’s essence merges with flesh;
As I help the lilies take their place
Holding their hands to lay them to rest atop the waters.

I exhale another shaking breath
As I carve another life into my canvas,
My hand moulding the trembling waters
Shuddering beneath the wandering summer breeze.

Or how the bridge bends back
Over the lilies that sleep across the pond
Sunbathing beneath the waking morning sun.

Millie Percival is a 21-year-old poet from Scarborough, who is currently studying Creative Writing at university. Her ekphrastic work originated from a project she undertook in her first year at university and has continued to be a favoured genre in her work. Her previous published works include “I Wish to Return Home” published by The Ekphrastic Review as well as smaller publications in university literary magazines.

Renaming Shades
Kate Copeland

Early morning sky slights past
this glass pale cave. I watch. 
Leaves wave brighter than 
green, down-to-earthly, cars
shut, neighbours light up
but, all day I will seat time,
removing night. A stubborn 
mind seasonal, winding any 
direction. In this state I speak 
not, hide feather-light shame. 
Gulls dive crumbs at the river. 
Barely visible I am — softer 
than a sitting song.

Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to teaching; her love for art & water to poetry. She is curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review & runs linguistic-poetry workshops for TER and IWWG. Find her poems @ TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Hedgehog Press [a.o.]  or @kate.copeland.poems

Woman in an Armchair
Pablo Picasso, 1909-1910