Today she wears an ex-lover’s fleece.
Tomorrow she will wear an ex-lover’s fleece.
Today she forgets to eat.
Tomorrow she will forget to eat.
Because she sits
as if dictionaries are balanced on her head,
she takes the train
to Brussels in search of Flemish primitives.
If the list she pencils between Trier and Luxembourg
were used to wipe her mouth.
If the apple she peels
were impaled on a pencil and flung out the window.
If the Earl Grey she sips between Luxembourg and Brussels
were used to dye a page in her notebook.
Gumboots squeak among the Old Master
reports of sacred time. An eye pools
like liquid silk. A finger
bookmarks prayer. Copper
kettle on hook—surrogate halo.
As if hearth, as if linen.
She studies the habits of drapery, and a mouth
mishappen with news. Craquelure
splinters flushed skin—she cannot
not see the centuries of damp
scaling a grieving face. The brittle,
fissured surface
decoupling from oak—
Eva Heisler has published two books of poetry: Reading Emily Dickinson in Icelandic (Kore Press, 2013) and Drawing Water (Noctuary Press, 2013, and excerpted in BOMB). Honors include the Poetry Society of America's Emily Dickinson Award, fellowships at MacDowell and Millay Arts, and, most recently, the 2021 Poetry International Prize.