PEN + BRUSH P. 2

Pen and Brush

Pen and Brush provides a platform to showcase the work of under-recognized female writers to a broader audience. Pen and Brush electronically publishes literary fiction and poetry curated by literary professionals who support our vision.

© 2016 by Gwen North Reiss

Curated for Pen and Brushby Christina Granados, co-creator of SoapBox Poets L.A.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any formwithout written permission from the publishers.

Published by Pen and Brush29 East 22nd Street, New York NY 10010www.penandbrush.org

PEN + BRUSH P. 3

Table of Contents

Paper Aperture __________________________________________ 6

Telling Everything Compounds the Mystery ___________________ 7

When it was new, my life __________________________________ 8

Found Dress ___________________________________________ 9

Ode to the Dishwasher __________________________________ 11

The Idealized Landscape _________________________________ 13

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Publisher’s Note

Pen and Brush is grateful to Gwen North Reiss and the writers who believed enough in our fledgling program structure to submit their work, and to Christina Granados and the literary arts curators who read so closely and wisely. Above all, Pen and Brush is grateful for the chain of passionate people who were willing to share in our vision for what is possible when talented women are given access to opportunity. Without each individual, the poems that you are about to read would not have been possible!

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Paper Aperture and Other Poems

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Paper Aperture

Like the airplane view through a pill-shaped window

my time has rivers trailing silver cities—

Byzantium Edinburgh Barcelona

it dwells in many roomslocked with snow and stars

has windstorms and leavesbells and wheat

knows a beat a foot terra and dactyl it weaves

light and shadow my time has lines capped

cursive italickingdom it unmaps itself

with a word it gets a new field.

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Telling Everything Compounds the Mystery

You saved me from the swarthy photograph,its telegrammed minute of dark and light.You learned the mathematics of the facefrom Velazquez, knew how fabricgoes to feather and hay and gesture.The child’s face complicatedas the man’s--and a woman’sthe surface of a lake. Silvered frostcream whites, blood-red parlor walls,the black matte of piano keys.You found in darkness the shimmerof white satin, moonglow of porcelain.

If I spent my life trying to gatherthe conditions of this world, you gave mesomething back that I never asked for,this windfall. Unlikely warmthof the chalk stripes, the visage whole,the eye sparked, the mouth softened,in no hurry for words. You knewto let these other things speak—white collar v-ing into black silk knot,the loose and light bend of threads,the hand warm and turned in,thumb hooked on a seam,and low on the vest, roseateand fire-licked, the chain of gold.And you waived your fee.

Henr y James, Por trait by John Singer Sar gent

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When it was new, my life

When it was new, my life was outside all the time. A curb was a place to sitnear storm drains and humpback cars

with their fan tails and white walls. It found a word it thought rhymed with amulet—C H E V R O L E T. It was a chrome word.

The hound of my life’s heart was Lucky Portnov. Wags tags brown tan coat. My lifewas not Lucky’s, it had to go to school

where it was given a black box with lettersand numbers. It could order and spell thingsand sweep it all away back into the box.

No matter how long I stuck aroundmy life never got any older.When I worked and traveled

it put up with the little black dressargued for the jeans and the sneakersloved the ocean-liner movement of clouds

the smell of grass, was suspiciousof the poems (gimcrack mirrors of itself).It grew up in a house full of weather.

Snow fell into it. Wind sang its rush. It felttree-fall and sat under the light-drenchedmoth wings of dogwood. Sometimes

it disappeared into 1940s movies.At the stove, it was a fan of the searand the sauté. It didn’t want to do

what other lives wanted to do.It was fine with getting marriedsaid why not it’s none of my business

went right ahead with things—daughterswith their fishing obsession. It learned to gentlyslip the hooks and free them.

It looked back in silence.There was no talking to my life.It wasn’t that kind of life.

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Found Dress

The old house came with thingsleft behind by the previous owner—the once-pink piano, painted greythe cast-iron treadle sewing machine

the wheel of an antique carthe garage Jaguar sign where the catlunged like a spread of ink

and the dress. I was tenand my mother asked me to put it on. I unzipped it in backand stepped into the strapless wired

form. Its curvy bodicehovered around my skinny ribs—but the waist, zipped and hooked,cinched me right. The white

ankle-length organdy, lace, organza—so many layers I could never have counted them—flew out in old world tattersall the whites a little grey

which I thought goodwith my dirty bare feet.It was summer. Early evening.The sun gold and strong.

Something about this thrilled my motherand I found inside this formsomething I never toldand still don’t know exactly.

Mirage of a woman’s shape?Or was it that the weight of this wing-likecovering could have a power more wildfor being benign, a frippery.

In this scene we are at the topof the stairs, near my roomwhich was the old library.

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The house was a gorgeous wreck.The previous owner had given out keysto down-on-their-luck friendsand acquaintances. The place

was made of windows and softened cornersand things in the drift of time. Some thought there was a ghost.He appeared to women

whose sleeping forms were suddenlyaware of his standing presence. I thoughtit had to be McKayanother previous owner

who forbade his wife to drive a car.The day after he died she went out and bought one.

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Ode to the Dishwasher

Once I cared nothing for youbut your word with its double sound wavesof quiet settled in. Strange sucking soundsand closed cycles of weather

for these clam-shell ceramicsand bouquets of forks and corkscrews. Behind your stainless panel, wind and whirlin a box, a rocking in the night kitchen.

When we were teenagerssprawled on couches, waiting for the Carson show or SNL,my father came down the hall of the ranch house,

stood in the doorway in his robelooked at the hopeless bunch of us,yawned, and whispered “DISHWASHER.”We knew what he meant.

Push the “on” buttonbefore you go to bed. He waved and went to sleep. Later, he left a folded card,

little house, on the counter, written in his lawyerly print.Friends would ask: why the card that saidDISHWASHER? They also asked about

the dog cheese (last week’s slicesfor the neighbor dogs) though they always hesitatedbefore asking. After I was married

my husband learned to sayDISHWASHER late at night to get meto turn the lights off before I went to sleep.

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At one brother’s college graduationa friend snuck up behind him, whisperedDISHWASHER. At my mother’s wakesomebody said DISHWASHER.

REFRIGERATOR with your odd turn-offsDRYER with your muffed clunksRANGE with your blue crown of flame,none of you come close.

None of you hold the near burst—a churn and course of water—or make as time doesa shine on ordinary things.

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The Idealized Landscape

Even in Arcadia,the museum placard says,there is mortality.The curator hands a group of usplain white cards with a cartoon bubbleprinted on each one. He asks us to findone figure somewhere in the painting,decide what he or she is just nowseeing or thinking. I am notgood at this sort of thing.The cartoon bubble is the mediumof superheroes, rescuers, help on the waybut there is no help here, just depth of field,time and distance, the lush devices of the painter’s art. Everywhere in these frames,temples and haystacks mark the distant hills.The sunlight warmsand illuminates the trees and rocksinto otherworldly brilliance.Thank goodness for the buildingsGreek and serenely placedeach on its own hill.They are timeless,neither ruin nor sanctuary.In each of the paintings,something has happened alreadyin the corner of the picture.With my paper in hand,I scan the faces.Very few of the figureshave noticed but they will.One will alert the othersunder the delicate, feathered trees.In one, Orpheus hasn’t seen yetwhat has happened at Eurydice’s foot.In another, Phocion’s wife,bent over his ashes, is dressedin such a blue blue.

On an Exhibit ion of Paintings by Nicolas Poussin