Vermeer's Veneer
By G. Timothy Gordon
All the frumpy young women
at music or bourgeois leisure
inviting us deeper into dark interiors,
schismatic Delft, Utrecht, Den Haag,
Dutch Reformed middling quiet pietism
of stolid burgher portraits, or at work,
mostly, and occasional play, sullen domestics,
tavern habitué glint and leer, procuress waitstaff matron
ever on-the-make with sober citizen-soldier
until that cleareyed girl with the rizz intrudes,
forsaking all others, red-lipped, blue-knit
stocking cap, gold tippet flowing down back,
exquisitely chiseled, porcelain-pearl profil perdu,
overarching womanly-cum-worldly steady stare
back at us hiding in plain coy, self-assured, sight
(look maybe not so right with the new stern Lord),
pregnant with color to set hearts pulsing,
stirring the blood, complicating male gaze
that burrows into your soul, stays put,
calls itself your own, more than breaks
your heart, could kill.
Degreed in Literature and Philosophy, Creative Writing, and Comparative Languages and Literatures, Dr. Gordon was awarded Fulbright, NEA, and NEH Fellowships for teaching and scholarship, artist residencies, and presented critical and creative papers in journals and at global symposia. EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE received RiverStone Press Poetry Prize, NIGHT COMPANY nominated for NEA Western States’ Book Awards, along with Pushcarts and Best of the Net. His ninth book, KNOWING, is forthcoming 2026 (Cyberwit). Recognized in Poets & Writers (NY), Maine Society of Poets, and Ohio Writers’ Directory, he divides lives between borderland New Mexico/Texas Chihuahuan Desert Southwest Organ Mountains and Asia.