These three poems by Paula Goldman portray her deep immersion in art, her love of the poetic form, and her profound fascination with complex issues of the human heart…
by: Paula Goldman
Winter Light
Calm lake, clouds hover
a hazy horizon, gray light
over the lake spreading
into mist over a barren bluff.
A coyote dashes below
my window, its yaps, howls,
haunting, the icy light of its gaze,
chilling. A neighbor’s dog barks.
Oh, frozen lake, I keep returning
or do you return to me? His words,
strands of pearls, dangling
down my back, the closer
we sought, the further apart
we grew, walking the beach
along the lake, he left my heart
with stones, shells, broken.The Nude
after Braque’s Seated Nude, 1906
In Braque’s Seated Nude, green is his oasis
in the Sahara of her back, her shoulder blades,
undulating ridges before the drop down
the steep arid bone well to moss covered hips,
the hug of damp shadows, seeping into
the wide draped towel. I hike down the shale-slick
of one hilltop breast, sloped abdomen into
strawberry patches. I smell her summer: green
vining upward like cool Galway drafts,
an absinthe mirage from the hallucinatory
sweat of his paintbrush. I go aslant, wind her
in my own bold lines, to keep me entwined
in the lush lap of Braque’s Seated Nude, 1906.A Poet's Sleeve
The blouse was light pink, nothing out of
the ordinary, mauve or peach, except
for the lush silk satin, billowing upon
my arm. The buttons were plain, not mother-of-
pearl, leading to a round collar,— “worn open
or closed depending upon your accessories,”—
the saleswoman spoke by rote. The pleats
in back gave it sweep and sway, a romantic
elegance, I saw in the three-way mirror.
And from the wide generous sleeves, wreathed
by a single ruffle, my shy fingers peeked.
Was the blouse really me? But when, suddenly,
she added “a poet’s sleeve”— I wanted
as many shirts as Gatsby: shirts with stripes
and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green
and lavender and faint orange, with monograms….Paula Goldman’s first book, The Great Canopy, won the Gival Press Poetry award, and was honorable mention for the Independent Booksellers’ Award. Her work has appeared in the Evening Street Review, Atlanta Review, Visions International, Halcyone Literary Quarterly, Santa Fe Literary Review, Dash, Oyez Review, Slant, Calyx, Passager, Ekphrasis, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Manhattanville Review, Cream City Review, Comstock Review, Harvard Review, The North American Review, Poet Lore, Poet Miscellany, Hawaii Pacific Review, Cæsura, Briar Cliff Review and other magazines. Her poems have appeared in Boomer Girls published by the University of Iowa Press, The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry published by New Rivers Press and most recently, Conversation Pieces published by Knopf. She was first prize winner in INKWELL’s (Manhattanville College) poetry competition and the Louisiana Literature Award for poetry. She holds an MA degree in Journalism from Marquette University and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. Former reporter for The Milwaukee Journal, she served as a docent and lecturer at the Milwaukee Art Museum for 25 years. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize 2017 and for 2021. She lives in Milwaukee, WI with her husband, married 54 years having two grown children and three grandchildren. A second book, Late Love, was published by Kelsay Books February, 2020.
