Poems:Florsheim

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Munch, on Dagny Juell*

after the lithograph, Jealousy II, by Edvard Munch, 1896

Everything about her is irresistible: her long black hair that falls into my face when we make love, her red lips the color of blood flower. And what's more, she loves me too even though she is the wife of my close friend and risks her marriage to meet me afternoons in my studio in the backstreets of Berlin. Her husband is outraged but she claims he does not know her as well as I do or the other men at the Cafe zum schwarzen Ferkel. Yes, she has been with a few of them too but she says I am her most passionate lover, when I gaze into her eyes I see her soul and there is nothing she can hide. In truth, she says, I can never belong to any man, I am too weak, and then she says, we are too weak, Edvard, that is why we will never stay together and why we need each other so much we embrace like this in the afternoon light-- surely all of Berlin can see.

• Published in The Girl Eating Oysters, by Stewart Florsheim, 2River Chapbook Series, 2004

Rembrandt, Petulant

after the etching, Self-Portrait, Frowning, by Rembrandt, 1630 Perhaps the men from the guild decided not to buy the Rembrandt after all and chose a Lastman instead, or Saskia complained once too often about how cold it is in his Leiden flat and wouldn't life be better if he had a proper house in Amsterdam, so Rembrandt goes into his study and etches his image into the wax: brows furrowed, lips sealed to prevent him from saying what he should. But he was never very good with words, they always got him into trouble like this morning when the green grocer tried to sell him an overripe banana and Rembrandt called him a klotzak so now he won't be able to go in there for days and Saskia will have to extend his apologies. Rembrandt continues etching the lines of his forehead, each one for another man from the guild, may they all end up at the bottom of a canal.

Stewart Florsheim

Stewart Florsheim has poetry in DoubleTake, Seattle Review and Slipstream. His poetry is also included in the anthologies Unsettling America: Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary American Poetry, Bittersweet Legacy, and And What Rough Beast. He is the editor of Ghosts of the Holocaust, an anthology of poetry by children of holocaust survivors.