TOM MONTAG - 10 POEMS FROM"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

Tom Montag's books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Imagination's Place; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. Two new collections, The River Will Tell You and Maybe Holy: Six Old Monk Poems are forthcoming. His poem 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns.​

POEM 1 from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting"
​

​Morning uncrosses
its legs and goes
for a walk. It
 
soon comes to noon.
The woman in
the painting doesn't
 
know noon from
after so she
waits. And those
 
of us standing here
in front of her,
we wait with her.

POEM 2 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"
​

​She who watches
every day as we come and go
sees us enjoy her nakedness.
 
Light in the museum
on her beauty makes shadow,
makes sadness, that silence.
 
You think because
we can leave the museum
we are somehow superior.
 
She who watches
knows your world is even sadder
than the one she inhabits.
 
She knows and you do not.
Only the poet loving her can see it.
Only the artist who painted her.
 
 
 

POEM 3 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

​What is the narrative
as she holds her naked
 
pose? She doesn't move,
so we can't speak of
 
motion. The light stays
and the shadows keep
 
their place. Blue sky out
the window makes no
 
promises. You want
a story. Every
 
naked woman should
have a story, you think,
 
yet the world stands still
in this instant, and those
 
who want more have to
learn how to live without
 
what she would tell them.
 
 
 

POEM 4 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

​We might say she loved
the artist as models
 
always do. The artist
loved her too, as artists
 
always must. But love is
not enough. It fails.
 
As always the only
hope is that hope remains.
 
 
 

POEM 5 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

​They want great
themes from the
great artists,
 
great poets.
They want hard
truths. I want
 
her to be
her, he says,
the artist
 
who painted
this woman.
Nothing can
 
be great if
you can't see
that she is.
 
 
 

POEM 6 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

Of all the things she wants,
perhaps fresh bread is first,

steaming and slathered with
butter the color of

the light in her hair. Wait!
You can almost taste it.

POEM 7 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

And the light
against the wall

casts her dream
as silence.

We do not know
how long she

has been waiting
here. We do

not know what
the artist wants

from her. We
do not know

what she hopes
for. We can

only say for
sure she has

found a stillness
we cannot have.



​

POEM 8 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

What we were is
what we are and
it's no different
for the woman
in the painting.

She is a hundred
thousand moments
of joy and sorrow,
of light and
the darkness which
comes with it.

She is daughter
and sister and
cousin. She is
her father's final
disappointment.

The sun goes down
on the hills of
her childhood and
here she is now,
lonely and
only a painting.

POEM 9 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

Before
every-

thing she
dresses

and un-
dresses

the thin-
ness of

what light
gives her.

POEM 10 FROM
"THE WOMAN IN AN IMAGINARY PAINTING"

Can we imagine
a bead of sweat
on her lips or

in the sweet place
between her breasts?
The artist would not


paint it, the proof
of her endurance,
yet her flesh was flesh

and the day was warm.
We lie to ourselves.
We turn from the truth.

Dream another dream,
if you must, but this
world is broken. When

we reach for the light
we've already touched
a farther darkness.

​