February 2017
Lisa Wiley
wileymoz@yahoo.com
wileymoz@yahoo.com
I studied with Billy Collins July 2013 in the Southampton Writers Conference on Long Island. I live with my husband, three children and two orange cats in Buffalo, NY where I teach creative writing and composition at Erie Community College. When I'm not running, I'm writing. My two chapbooks include My Daughter Wears Her Evil Eye to School (The Writer's Den, 2015) and Chamber Music (Finishing Line Press, 2013).
Christina's World - Andrew Wyeth
Monday at MoMA
Christina!
I lunge toward Wyeth’s masterpiece
at the top of the fifth floor,
reach out to her like the fragile figure
posed in this dry, bristly field.
I’m watching you,
the security guard jests.
No touching.
Her dark fingers point back and forth
between her eyes and mine.
The vast, barren field hits me later
as I draw the hotel’s white shower curtain.
Mothers can sob in the shower—
I know my friend who lost her father
is Christina captured in a lonely landscape.
This grass of grief, where no one can reach her,
not even her husband who wraps his arm
around her at the holiday band concert
during soulful Silent Night.
We are all just reaching out, out, out.
Monday at MoMA
Christina!
I lunge toward Wyeth’s masterpiece
at the top of the fifth floor,
reach out to her like the fragile figure
posed in this dry, bristly field.
I’m watching you,
the security guard jests.
No touching.
Her dark fingers point back and forth
between her eyes and mine.
The vast, barren field hits me later
as I draw the hotel’s white shower curtain.
Mothers can sob in the shower—
I know my friend who lost her father
is Christina captured in a lonely landscape.
This grass of grief, where no one can reach her,
not even her husband who wraps his arm
around her at the holiday band concert
during soulful Silent Night.
We are all just reaching out, out, out.
©2017 Lisa Wiley
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF
