Welcome to the Summer 2026 Issue of Metphrastics. We have poems by Olaitan Akano, Ivory Alexander, Marc Chamberlain, Barbara Krasner, Michelle Penn, and G. Sabbatini responding to works by Emanuel Leutze, Johan Christian Dahl, an unknown artist, and pieces from Ancient Egypt and Ancient West Asian Art. We also have a poem about the experience of going to the Met for one reason, but being pulled in different directions by other artists. Our featured poet is… who is interviewed at the end of this issue.
Call for Submissions: For Fall 2026, we’re looking for poems about Wounds. This can be a literal or abstract wound depicted in a painting, a “wounded” or damaged work of art itself, kintsugi and other artistic repairs of “wounds,” weapons that have caused wounds, having your heart broken in the Egyptian Wing, or any other way you’d like to interpret this prompt. Please submit by September 15th!
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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.
I begged you not to attend
Ivory Alexander
the orgies on Mount Vesuvius.
Spit trails dangling from the glossy edges of history.
Letters of post-mortem lovers and post-coital sacrifices
segregated in casts, poses considered facts.
Sinners bedded In Herculaneum, numberless speeches recorded
for museum tours.
Molten dragonflies jet through the air,
boiling the throat of God.
In the gutters of my dreams I saw
a princess skinny dipping into Pompeii
with ash rubbed on her vulva.
The marble-breasted soldier stood in the furrowed afterbirth.
In the present-day, it is thought that the detached face on my neck
may belong to the body discovered next to me, the dust of my crushed
fingers making the background art of our headboard.
The moment we meant to part will never come.
I hope it is known that when the heat gored our villa,
I seized your weak arms, desperate to mummify
our last shared breath.
Ivory Alexander is a writer from Georgia, and is currently studying Creative writing and Linguistics at Columbus State University. She has nurtured a love of writing poetry and prose, and her work has been featured in the literary magazine at her university, where she is now editor-in-chief, and in the Carson McCullers Literary Awards.
An Eruption of Vesuvius
Johan Christian Dahl, Norwegian, 1824
The Fall of Nineveh
G. Sabbatini
here lies Ashurnasirpal’s sentinels:
human-headed gypsum beasts,
colossal remains of a forgotten god’s grandeur
conscripted at last into American service
heralds of our own undoing, their testimony—
the felling of an empire,
one link in a great chain,
a promise for those who know to listen
G. Sabbatini writes poetry, fiction, and essays that investigate creative mythologies and cultural memory. Her work explores the stories we tell about art, artists, and their afterlives. Learn more at gsabbatini.com.
Human-headed winged lion (lamassu)
Assyrian, ca. 883–859 BCE
Snap the Whip
Barbara Krasner
I came to see the Raphael exhibition.
But Winslow Homer wrapped a rope
around my waist and tugged me
into the sunlight to snap the whip.
I came to see the Raphael exhibition.
But Theodore Robinson beckoned me
into his bird’s eye brushstrokes of Giverny
until I had no choice but to stand on the hill and linger.
I told myself I came to see the Raphael exhibition.
But instead I push aside Mrs. Hugh Hammersly
on that velvet sofa, ready to sit
for John Singer Sargent and my own portrait.
I wanted to repose on John White Alexander’s divan,
my voluminous white dress spilling, fur trim
curving along the sumptuous lines of my body
and dare Alexander to paint me.
The guards mumbled how the Raphael exhibition
was a sea of people. I should hold off.
William Merritt Chase offered me a chair
and a basket of sewing while I waited.
In the back of my mind I knew
I came to see the Raphael exhibition.
But I wanted to join James Jebusa Shannon’s girls
as they listened to their mother reading Kipling’s jungle tales.
I had thirty minutes left before my car service came
to take me back to Jersey. I came to see the Raphael exhibition.
I couldn’t get past the labyrinth of wall text readers.
I could always buy the catalog.
Barbara Krasner is a New Jersey-based poet with ekphrastic collections The Night Watch (Kelsay Books, 2025), The Wanderers (Shanti Arts, 2026), and the forthcoming The Appropriation of Brueghel (Shanti Arts, 2027).
Snap the Whip
Winslow Homer, American, 1872