The sun shining through the open window
is also a flower in a blue vase on the table,
where a mandolin waits to be picked up and played
or is it a fish or a bread board?
He thinks the seated figure is himself,
new to the city’s tall buildings,
far away from that neighbor woman,
the electrician’s widow with the perm and spider veins
who saw his comings in and his goings out
and had a voice to make men
shut up and listen.
He thinks he’s left the little town for good,
but if she knew he thought that
she’d only laugh. Seeing this painting
she’d say a four-year-old could do better.
He hears her voice like tinnitus
in the museum’s whooshy breathing:
“I don’t know much about art,” she says, “but I know
you, buster, better than you know yourself.”
John Palen's Open Communion: New and Selected Poems was published by Mayapple Press in 2005. Since then he has had chapbooks published by March Street Press and Pudding House, and has poetry or flash fiction appearing or forthcoming in The Honey Land Review, Sleet, Press 1, Jelly Bucket, Temenos, Bare Root Review, Off the Coast, Ragazine, and Clapboard House. A Michigander for 35 years, he is now living and writing in Central Illinois.
