occult (lute, woman, maid)
—after Woman with a Pearl Necklace and Mistress and Maid by Johannes Vermeer
1.
Oh, Johannes, your piercing detail
slips from disdained glass. Accuracy’s correction
without fail! I can tell that your crucifixion
will scream at the explosions—
thank you;
this is my hallo.
2.
Here, in a perpetual darkness,
they speak:
weather has fallen into fog,
the maid announces,
reaching across the table.
The mistress breathes out,
my chin is something greater,
in mutual, open agreement.
They are half-common
& pretend-rich—
so most of it is done:
she’s in yellow &
not fascinated by you.
3.
I am somewhere, deranged,
but I’ll answer your narrative:
In pearled parallel, she decides why.
She cannot count, yet she has solved
oil’s liquidity and the stretch of area.
In every scene,
an outside dawn breaks as her heart
pauses. You can’t tell, but she is deciding
why she doesn’t know how to play the lute.
4.
Museums
are mediums
to pass around ownership.
Qualifications vanish once you
study the master it’s simple;
to be a Vermeer means
a woman’s best angle
is her left. To tame chaos
then watch as you set a
woman free.
Aaliyah Anderson (she/her) is a junior majoring in Literary Arts at her high school in Petersburg, VA. Her work is forthcoming or appears in Paper Crane, miniMAG, coalitionworks, and elsewhere. Aaliyah is a General Editor at Renaissance Review. She's obsessed with storytelling.
← previous issue 1 next →