Carpenter & Wilhelm – Baltimore Ekphrasis Project

Dayna Carpenter and Gregg Wilhelm traded art and words. Dayna shared this untitled painting with Gregg:

In response, Gregg wrote this poem:

Arithmetic of an Argument

secret / discovery + phrase
+ reason – retraction x pause
one word tips the string
her limbs form a geometry
an impenetrable calculus
her glance away a {null set}
she starts to bleed into ∞

* * * * *

Gregg shared this poem with Dayna:

Jutting Out (Patapsco)

Throw a stone
Two hundred years
Across potaskit
From Canton tanks
To Federal fort
Where red no longer
Bathes ramparts

Dip into its dirty Waters
Chase rye on Holiday
Wash with anonymous
Mothers of inventors
Fall exhausted on glass-
Strewn Sylvia’s beach

Then float along Smith’s
Clay-banked Bolus Flu
Up into a hoary place
That knows its place
Among shards of stories
Conjured on its current

In response, Dayna made this painting, entitled “Colliding Coasts”: