Ekphrastic poetry by Camille LeFevre

“Piñata” is an ekphrastic poem also inspired by a Tina Mion painting, “Piñata, self portrait.”

"Piñata, self portrait,” Tina Mion (American), oil on linen, 2010

Piñata

                                               -	After Tina Mion’s painting “Piñata, self portrait” 

the slap splitting my slumber 
as weeping seeped through walls	

the scream ringing my ears 
as cursing echoed down halls 

the shame heaping my shoulders 
as derision dried into bone	— 

my life as piñata meant mind candy-
coded to craft paper personas 
painted and ruffled to fun,

ingesting disgrace with maulstick’s 
calculated smacks,

gluing hope inside toothy frills 
lip-glossed to grimace  	—

that last whack, though, 
unlocking, releasing 
a cascade 
	of womanhood 
the detritus 
	of art and artifice 
a catalog 
	of hurts and harm
	of griefs and grievances 
voided 

	even sweetness 
	even wonder			
		“are you your own stick?”  —  
disarmed 

down a fury-red canvas 
bleeding into light 

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Camille LeFevre writes poetry and creative nonfiction. She teaches ekphrastic writing workshops in galleries and arts writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her ekphrastic work has appeared in Unleash Lit, Metphrastic, Poets for Science, and The Ekphrastic Review. In 2023, she was awarded the Scuglik Memorial Residency in ekphrastic writing at Write On, Door County, in Wisconsin. She lives in Northern Arizona, where she writes, hikes, studies Indigenous rock art, and swims in cold-water creeks.