“Women, Windows” by Lauren Rusk
after Vermeer
Light on a wall,
a woman. Light—
the pour of milk, her round
forehead as she reads
where he arranged her—each
of those women—
near a window to catch the glow,
not look through.
But to the women that light means
opening out—
bellying clouds
painted on the virginals
she’s poised to play,
a stretch of river blowing.
Lifting her pen, she pauses,
tuning a lute string
listens—does it
ring true?
The seeds prick and sparkle like water,
in her cracked wheat
rising on the sill.
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Lauren Rusk Artist Statement:
Lauren Rusk teaches creative writing at Stanford University, including its programs
in Paris, Berlin, and Oxford, and has also taught at Swarthmore College and the A
Room of Her Own Foundation’s retreat. Her books are a collection of poems, Pictures
in the Firestorm (second edition 2015) and a study of autobiographical writing, The
Life Writing of Otherness: Woolf, Baldwin, Kingston, and Winterson (2002, reprinted
2009). Her poems and essays have appeared in such publications as Hotel Amerika,
the Writer’s Chronicle, and Best New Poets, whose Open Competition she won. Her
internet address is http://stanford.edu/~rusk/
