Looks like September will be ekphrastic poem month. This poem was inspired by a painting by Lu De’an.

A cold basement

A Tasmanian Devil of motion
in a blood-red dress

The violence of her dancing
bruises the air through which she moves

leaving the occasional smear of blood
to mark the path the saxophonist took
as he staggered from the scene—

or perhaps crawled
(forensics hasn’t come back yet)

(1 September 2016)