Eliza Mimski
Three Women Waiting
There is dread on Lunia Czechowska’s mask-like face,
eyes heavy-lidded. Her
elongated Modigliani neck
has resigned itself.
Each day repeating, repeating.
a grinding screech, a
knife scratching against a china plate.
The absinthe drinker, chin in hand,
mouth lined with tedium and her eyes reduced to slits,
bones decaying and fingers slow-growing into claws,
ponders nothing and cannot stand another day
in this empty Picasso cafe.
Whistler’s mother, her eyes forward,
white day cap, thin lappets,
dark garb, hands in her lap with
a handkerchief clutched in her hands,
her feet supported by a block of wood is
patiently waiting for the pandemic to end.
—Submitted on 05/14/2020
Eliza Mimski‘s poetry has appeared in Poets Reading the News, Entropy, New Verse News, The Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroine Chic, and other journals, as well as in the anthology the Skinny, Five:2:One, Voice of Eve, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Visual Verse, Writers Resist, and has been in the anthology Hers: A Poets Speak Anthology (Beatlick Press, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She lives in San Francisco.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.