March 2017
Kate Sontag
sontagk@ripon.edu
After 22 wonderful years in Ripon, Wisconsin, I am happy to report a successful move to the Berkshires with my husband and two spaniels. Co-editor with David Graham of After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography (Graywolf), my recent publications in addition to V-V include SoFloPoJo, Villanelles (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets), and Cooking With The Muse (Tupelo). I have work forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review and The Crafty Poet 11 (Terrapin Books). Pantoums are in my DNA, and I am grateful to FF for accepting so many of them.
Poet's note: The italicized répétons in this villanelle are lines from two different Emily Dickinson poems. It is part of an ekphrastic series written to accompany my mother's many pastel drawings that my sister and I discovered after her death. With special thanks to FF for publishing three other poems and drawings from the series in the September 2016 issue of V-V.
Grace Millar - untitled pastel on paper  

​Pastel Villanelle
 

You know that portrait in the moon?
I sometimes see my mother’s unmade face.
She sweeps with many-colored brooms

around the house, defying logic. Soon
she’ll rise to greet the stars in space.
You know that portrait in the moon

in partial eclipse? She’s suddenly flown
to the other side and made my heart race.
She sweeps with many-colored brooms,

wears the black sky like a lonely room
divided in half, with a tint of mace.
You know that portrait in the moon,

cloudy gold x-ray afloat in a vacuum?
Look closely at its distant fluorescence.
She sweeps with many-colored brooms

away the work her body’s left undone.
Unsigned it’s still authentic Grace.
You know that portrait in the moon
she sweeps with many-colored brooms.
 ​​© 2017 Kate Sontag
Editor's Note:  If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF