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Mural Matrix: Ekphrasis - After Egon Schiele’s Dead Mother
Written: August 27, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Brian Strand
Discover the profound intensity of Egon Schiele's "Dead Mother" (1910). This evocative piece, executed in oil on canvas, showcases Schiele’s signature expressionist style, marked by distorted forms and raw emotional depth.
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a body beclouded —
bruised bones
blood gone brittle
barely beating
bonds below bosom
an ash-carved cradle—
cold. . . obsidian. . .
a lifeless hand cradles mute screams
& black oaks shrouding her cold
this eclipse is unnoticed —
no censers sway in mourning,
the universe collapses to a single node
of visceral isolation
a star clings to its core
trapped inside her
[ cage ]
untouched by dark —
feed me, fledgling feasts —
on slithering worms
sunk beneath the flesh
a trapped crimson pulse
a buried spark
flung into her cold mass
tethered. . . heat-struck. . . severely sealed. . .
her skeletal ribs around his thin limbs
a heavy gyre
against blinding—
neon flare
he nests within the pallid corpse
staring through tissue
at his universe unravels —
her soul receding
beast of death consumes her
life shatters —
no crystal path
just tacks splinter or no way through
his eyes, dimmed by darkness —
a true epicenter
of her splintered womb
fixed in a blind. . . unblinking. . . sinking. . .
mother crack bone by bone—
creeps cold through his blood
ribs fold inward
a suffocating shroud
around his little burning vessel
trapped on a frozen
m u r k y sea
he is a raw nerve —
her defensive posture
hardens into an a r c h e t y p a l shield
a silent human anchor—
wailing through katabatic a b y s s
he alone witnesses—his dawn collapse
in her stance
in her trembling bones
in his shattered gaze
tragedy seeps from the canvas
not a rehearsed grief of adults
but a child's primal wonder
awakening to one terrible truth
flesh can die—
& life is frail
a billboard bleeds — battered bond
a tendon trellis torn by turbid tangle—
here housed — in heavy horrors
stark sweeps seal the stupor shut—
wistful waif wandering—wasted wildling
mortal magnum opus moored in a mural matrix —
gathered girdled grazing grates
clutching to his mother's ceremonial cloak
as her pulse pivots into perpetual peace. . .
a d a m a n t i n e
a l a b a s t e r
a l b e s c e n t
a
s
h
y
a n a t o m y
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