Ekphrasis

A moon with a distinctive nose stares back at onlookers from its position in the icy darkness of space. While viewing his finished miniature, the artist pondered why the moons of the other planets in the solar system have such fantastical names (all from classical Greek mythology, except for the moons of Uranus, whose names are mainly taken from Shakespeare) while our own moon goes nameless. Eschewing a nomenclature conspiracy, the artist then realized that our phase-driven noctural companion was most likely a Ben Wa ball of strong-shouldered Atlas, and should therefore be named after an STD with a Greek name, such as chlamydia. But even that didn’t seem right. So the artist pondered the lovely poem “who knows if the moon’s a balloon” by E. E. Cummings and decided to make it the ekphrasis for this painting, but he was barred from doing so because of the absurdly paranoid copyright restrictions on that poet’s works. So, in desperation, he donned the sun’s sister “Niagara Vindaloo” and called it a night.