Henry Louis Shifrin
Summer 2009
A Pen in a Pen Museum
My barrel still echoes the press
of my Mona Lisa's lips. Behind glass
I am. Unknown. Many years from December
1503, the last time I played cigar
for her, pretended to let loose
ash when she gently flicked
me. Us two in the mirror. My reflection
much prettier as complement
to hers. Had anyone recorded
her bite, they could match the incisor
marks I keep along my side.
They are mine. Gold coins
to me, and no one else can pocket
them. The oil Leonardo brushed
on poplar, only strokes of connotation:
a faint smile trapped under his closed
lids, his Mona. A sly incubus for dry minutes,
she knows damp light, mildew on pale fingers
and museum walls, rose-petal musk
of cuffed slacks, the clack of heel on tile.
But not my Mona. I followed her fingers
across the page, whether sunlight,
moonlight or candlelight glowed
a star to my moon of nib. Her mint breath
flowed like her hair and her thoughts
sang in the voice of a sparrow, beat fists
against the door her father often locked.
How she loved a stretch of meadow, the wings
of butterflies, a cascade of lavender. She'd bite
her lower lip to control a shiver when she explained
a cloud's change from cotton to gray, her cherub
cheeks darkening. She knew rain. Understood
an involuntary fall, the eyed object left silent.
Henry Louis Shifrin's main language is Java: both the speech of virtual-machine-interpretted conversations (software) and the talk of coffee beans (caffeinated tongues). He lives in St. Louis with his wife Julie, daughter Josie and son Ezra.
