head tipped like a peony, hands 
cormorant wings shedding 

water, back an alabaster fragment 
unearthed from wreckage, I 

can be radio-carbon dated, DNA 
tested to our last shared chromosome.

Agar-plated, I bloom with your 
breath, your mazy fingertips. 

Lip-blots on linen, on cigarette butts, 
smell filling each intimate crease, 

I gather you up, laying you down 
on the day’s stretched canvas, 

a scaffolding for my brush, the 
illusion of weight and volume.

I Have Loved You Since the World Began
(Mixed-media painting, 12x12 inches, 2016)

Copyrighted © 2016 by Lorette C. Luzajic. All rights reserved.

—Published previously in Risk Being / Complicated: Poems by Devon Balwit, Inspired by the Collage Art of Lorette C. Luzajic (CreateSpace, January 2018); poem and painting are reproduced here with permissions from both the poet and the artist.

Devon Balwit

teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and two collections in print or forthcoming: How the Blessed Travel (Maverick Duck Press), Forms Most Marvelous (dancing girl press), In Front of the Elements (Grey Borders Books), Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders Books), The Bow Must Bear the Brunt (Red Flag Poetry), We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being / Complicated (with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic), and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, Red Earth Review, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and others.

Poet’s website: https://pelapdx.wixsite.com/devonbalwitpoet

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Book Review of Risk Being / Complicated and Interviews with Devon Balwit and Lorette C Luzajic, by Alexandra Umlas in Connotation Press (Issue III, Volume X: January 2019)

⚡ Jew in Rattle (1 November 2018)

⚡ Despite the Blaze in Rise Up Review (January 2017)

Lorette C. Luzajic

is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a publication devoted exclusively to writing inspired by visual art. Her poetry and prose have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Bookslut, Calliope, Cargo Literary, Cultural Weekly, Everyday Poetry, Main Street Rag, Peacock Journal, Rattle, Taxicab Mag, and numerous other venues. She is a mixed-media visual artist and author of 22 books, ranging from collections of short fiction, essays, and poems to visual arts and photography. Her artworks have recently been exhibited in her home city, Toronto, as well as in the Yucatan, Mexico, and in Tunisia, North Africa.

Artist’s website: www.mixedupmedia.ca

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Poet Devon Balwit and Artist Lorette C. Luzajic Interview Each Other About Their Recent Collaboration, Risk Being / Complicated in The Ekphrastic Review (4 April 2018)

⚡ Two Poems by Lorette, “The Beachcomber” and “The Glow in the Dark Virgins,” in Cultural Weekly (8 May 2019)

⚡ Piecing It All Together in Streetlight Magazine (25 February 2019)