Welcome to the Spring 2025 issue of Metphrastics! We received many creative responses to our first theme call, “Mother & Child”—poems about maternal love, infant care, mothers in mourning, abortion, miscarriage, being at the Met as a child, and breastfeeding Madonnas. We have poems by Alexandra Burack, Allison Burris, Kate Copeland, Elizabeth Curry, Martha Hipley, Madison Lazenby, and Emma-Jane Peterson responding to works by Diane Arbus, Weegee, Frederick Goodall, Maurice Sterne, and Erica Karawina. Daonne Huff, a poet and arts worker, is our featured writer this month, and she responds to a medieval painting by Paolo di Giovanni Fei. You can read an interview about her ekphrastic process here.

We hope you enjoy our first theme issue. The Summer 2025 issue will be open to all submissions, but we’ll have another theme issue coming soon. 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.

Mother and Child in Harlem
Allison Burris

The mirror tried to hold their gaze but cracked
with a flash of their eyes. The mother, lean,
ready to eat the wolf no matter the huff or puff
her hair a crown of braids above her striped tee
the boy a contrasting echo in his overalls
hand to his mouth in shock of the shadows
or perhaps to keep his snack in his mouth
the curtains drawn back, the knob catching
the light. There are ghosts, monsters, 
but this woman is more than a match
for whatever is at the door. 

Allison Burris grew up in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Oakland, California. Her poems embrace the whimsical and cozy, explore human connection, and affirm the power of stories. She received her MLIS from San Jose State University and her poetry appears or is forthcoming in various journals, including Instant Noodles, Heartline Spec, Muleskinner, After Happy Hour Review, and The Marbled Sigh. Connect with her here.

Mother and Child in Harlem
Weegee, 1939, printed by Sid Kaplan, c. 1983

Marian Blues (Montmartre 1901)
Emma-Jane Peterson

 after Mother and Child on a Bench by Pablo Picasso

You transcend your carnal throne,
sat in lapis robes, soiled with mossy stains,
waiting for Magi to present their gold
with which to buy scant bread of heaven.
Too late, they stroll on past the wretch,
not noticing his halo, flecked with bright
ginger strands, a royal boy wrapped,
ready, in grave clothes marked with phlegm.
Cradled in your suffering arms,
you bite your cold, blue hand of woe,
braced to find a priest and cry out
for pity—ruined as you are, no virgin.
Who will bury this dear, imperial babe,
cast him upward into yonder, breathless sky?

Emma-Jane Peterson is the co-author of a book of children’s Bible stories (Parragon) and has written prose and poetry for magazines in the UK and the US.

Art Song
Alexandra Burack

The scrawny kid in the park is hungry.   In the cup shaped by the tensed, crooked
fingers of an upturned palm is the candied rage he sucks with a paper straw

that he’s loosed to fall at his feet.  Grass stains smirk   with gritty mouths
under his outsized knees.   He has staked his claim to boy-dom   and its furioso

of refusal, its aria of armies at the ready.   He will not  pull  up  the fallen
strap  that buttons to his corduroy shorts,   he will not  stand  for the taming

of his cowlick,   he will not  pull  up  his socks, he will not      smile.  He won’t
ever read   the Christmas message, “when everybody was getting killed, I wished

I was back home,” scrawled   by the lost father. The boy plucks his lips into a grimace
that pulls taut   the tendons in his neck, and sharpens the focus   of his red sneakers, 

a wooden ice cream spoon stuck   to a splash of chocolate, crinkled aluminum gum
wrappers,  a twig with a small trigger shoot   for practice war. The ghost spring-

loaded in his bony knees assures   I am with you, in the stained glass phosphorous
of psychedelic sun   through the sparse leaves on the pavement.

The boy cannot see two broad mothers with toddlers blurred and out of reach
in the background.   Obscured by his blond head, a tall,  firm skirted figure

approaches paired trees   where women hide to sob.  The thwarted kid in the park
is prepped to avenge and the ghost wound tightly in his toy hand grenade   dares

Go on, pluck the pin. Do it for me.


Found text: the text in quotation marks is taken from Letter #22, December 16, 1968, written by Paul O’Connell, a Marine who fought in Vietnam from 1968-1969. For more information, see here.

Alexandra Burack, writing coach/editor and author of On the Verge, has published poems in The Sewanee Review, The Blue Mountain Review, and Heavy Feather Review, among other venues. She is a Poetry Editor for Iron Oak Editions and a Poetry Reader for The Los Angeles Review, The Adroit Journal, and $ Poetry is Currency.

Isa
Kate Copeland

another time, another universe

when you were expected

when I was overwhelmed 

you were there and then
you weren’t

my words won't breed whispers
your name won’t be voice

the medic carried clean machines
and my body just kept breathing

a silent tiger

maybe it’s not about another time
maybe it’s just not meant to be

and past the sound of rain, sounds

another universe.

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 the IWWG. Find her poems @ TER, WildfireWords, Gleam, Hedgehog Press [a.o.] or @kate.copeland.poems

Studies of a Baby
Frederick Goodall, 1868

The Fat Baby Jesus of Art History
Martha Hipley

Jenna is Jewish, but she loves
The Fat Baby Jesus of Art History
as much as I do –
the ones that look like hideous men
tamped down into marshmallow bodies –
babies that leer at the Virgin’s tits,
made by men who never held a child.
I text her lazy photos whenever I see one:
in a museum, in a church,
on the wall of my Mexican boxing gym,
raising his little gloved hands
above all fighters who train
in the light and faith.
I am in New York for a few days,
and we go to the Met –
Jenna, her husband, her daughter, and I.
Baby Margot is now sturdy, human,
has pigtails like a cartoon girl.
She walks through the museum
hand-in-hand with her father,
nodding as he points out this-or-that.
She takes imaginary photos
with her plastic toy phone,
and whispers to him
when she thinks I’m not looking.
What does a baby
think is worth saving?

What does she say
that I shouldn’t hear?
We walk through the Medieval art,
aglow with Catholic decadence.
I catch a glance of my favorite of all:
a Madonna and Child
carved in undulating, unassuming wood.
The Jesus looks like Mark Zuckerberg.
The Virgin looks tired and sad.
You would too with a kid like that.
Of all the Jesus-Mary pairs we have seen,
this one remains iconic.
On our way to the exit,
us all tired and hungry,
Margot holds up her plastic phone
and says something loud for me to hear.
“Is it all mommies and babies?” she asks.
“Sure, that’s right,” says Jenna.

Martha Hipley is a writer, and filmmaker from Baltimore, Maryland who lives and works in Mexico City. Her stories have been published in New Limestone Review, Maudlin House, and surely magazine, among others. When not working, she enjoys training as a triathlete and boxer.

Virgin and Child in Majesty
French, c. 1175-1200

Mother and Child, Maurice Sterne, 1913
Elizabeth Curry

after Mother and Child by Maurice Sterne

She thought she’d never forget
the weight of him, heavy
on her hip, his arms gripping
tightly around her neck.
How she was always in motion
bouncing, rocking,
expertly navigating
daily life with her one free arm. 

Somehow the memories
blurred together, reduced
themselves down 
to shape and line,
the details too fleeting
to be captured, especially on the page.

Elizabeth A. Curry is a poet and writer. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts where she received the Excellence in Writing Award. Recently, her poetry won second place in the 2024 MN League of Poets Agates division and has been featured in The Ekphrastic Review, The Agates Chapbook, and Red Wing Arts Poet/Artist Collaboration Exhibit and Chapbook. She lives in Minnesota with her family and loves being outdoors year-round, especially at dusk. Connect with Elizabeth here. 

do you have oatmilk? (a polyptypch to breastfeeding)
Daonne Huff

dedicated to Julia and Caitlin

“She sat in this room holding her son on her lap, staring at his closed eyelids and listening to the sound of his sucking…She felt him..She had the distinct impression that his lips were pulling from her a thread of light. It was as though she were a cauldron issuing spinning gold.”

from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, pg 13

I.
Babies can’t breathe out of their mouths or rather 
she said they have to learn how to but also 
what good is mouth breathing if you’re suckling
the dribbles and drips and spills would abound 
and after all that work to latch on

II.
Jazz musicians should just be honest
they learned circular breathing from 
babies

III.
He snorts
when ready
for milk

IV.
I asked if breastfeeding was
impacting her body

breastfeeding is really hard she replied
and she sees why women choose not to do it but 
she was doing it but 
giving extra formula and pumping when
her nipples or energy needed
a break but 
she noted that with boob
alone they end up screaming if 
there’s anything off if
too much milk if
too little milk if
too fast if 
too slow if 
they’re just tired He was born early and 
didn’t really have the stamina for it 

Daonne Huff is an arts worker, performance centered artist, curator and poet who was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She is currently on a self-imposed sabbatical from full-time work in the art world to view it at a distance, to rehabilitate herself and to reassess her fundamental "why" now in the throes of her 40s.

Madonna and Child
Paolo di Giovanni Fei, 1370s

Child Support, A.D.
Madison Lazenby

after Pieta by Erica Karawina

I stopped going to the group your boys signed me up for.
Everyone there was a widow.
Poor girls.
The instructor said my grief is not unique.
No one believed me during circle-share as I described
the voice I heard when I received my assignment,
when I built your ribs one at a time,
when I watched you close the eyes your father gave you.
You could say we’ve kept in touch all these years—
he gives me credit for your long legs & soft skin.
I’ve been reading all the books instead.
You’d get a kick out of them.
Page after page talking about grace & forgiveness,
reminders to remember the father’s feelings in these trying times.
I should have homeschooled you.
I should have wrapped you up in my shawls like a gift & ran.

Madison Lazenby is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet currently based in the Midwest. She has been the recipient of fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, the Kettle Pond Writers’ Residency, and the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference. Her work has been recognized and published by the Academy of American Poets, Red Weather, and Anti-Heroin Chic.