Like the Light, She Arrives, by Jenna K Funkhouser

Interior, Strandgrade, by Vilhelm Hammershoi (Denmark) c. 1908

Like the Light, She Arrives
after Hammershoi


I.
Today you wake in a thick womb of silence, before it is pierced
by your waiting life. You wake with one soft wing upon your
mouth; a crease in your mind, an unspoken Thing, listening.
Watch the morning now, sprouting its wheatfields of light upon
the floor. Gather your thoughts within you like a fluted bowl, your
skin breathing, particles suspended in air. Learn to grow heavy,
palpable. 
 
something in it thinks, 
and is thinking without us
white bowls full of words


II.
A house with no memories is a chapel of moments, doors
opening, windows with nothing to tell, and breath, the pale green
seeping out of the walls, reminding one how kindred they are,
lung and mind, necessary as air. The table stands beside her,
emptied into the now, attention settling like dust. The mirrors
silent on the walls. Soon, we become the standing, mind paused
with expectation, body alert like a silent watcher of birds,
convinced that any moment we will walk through…

you shout, and she turns
her head; you have chosen the
memory, she says


III.
What does she stand for, placed like an object among objects,
obscured from us, hinted to us? Like the light, she arrives without
explanation, a presence which neither needs nor shuns you, and
all gains meaning in association. She waits for no one to return,
no one to blame, holding the keys there in her darkened hands.
The room is solid with her shrouded form, blessing us eternally
from the wooden chair, which will never die. Bound within time,
we project our faces onto hers, invent stories, miracles. The
heavy truth of her silence will outlast them all.

through the glass, a soft
suggestion of first snow, a
sea with no waves, tide


IV.
To become the light, first you must sit in darkness. To become a
fount, first the dark field, swallowing rain. Light is a knowledge
that follows itself through darkness, wise of its own existence,
placid joy unassailed, stark carrier of common grace. All things
trust as it spreads its body beneath their feet: take this free gift
of myself, and with it, grow. When you find that still, porous space
within you, it is ready to climb in. 

she waits, with her tray
of desire, outlives us
the solitude blooms

V.
I have to believe a room is placed like this, bruise-purpled, cotton
swabbed, swimming in its own muffled light. Precarious moment,
tending towards the sentimental and the symphony, suggestion
of crayon, small knitted caps. Particles clump through the curtain
like timid droves of bees. And she, dark as midnight, absorbing
and absolving all 

from the soft altar 
she kneels, half-assenting fact 
in the pastel dawn


VI.
How many faces a room wears; how many faces we bring within
its doors. The day is beginning, the day is ending, night and
encore of night, always the frame. This moment, immortalized;
this one man’s window, nobody’s mirror. Does a true thought
exist before it arrives, paperweight in the palm of the mind,
meant for weighing down the infinite? Paint lies thick on the
flesh, canvas. Three bricks of light crash through the window,
anchor into the hazy blue. 

Who is behind the 
lens: the seeing one? The moon 
climbs the wall. Waves break. 

VII.
Mystery is the silver mouse I suggest to you in the corner. Again
you turn to remember, this needle between the cracks, thread of
sheer muscle and the waking doubtfulness of ghosts. Now the
walls are slate, weighted and ancient, burying their shadows
beneath a succession of doors. She has disappeared from this
poem.

swirl of fingerprints 
like moulded clay across 
the surface. is. was. 

Jenna K Funkhouser

Jenna K Funkhouser is a poet and author living in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has recently been published by Geez Magazine, the Saint Katherine Review, and As It Ought To Be, among others. She is currently working on her second volume of poetry, an ekphrastic exploration of fully inhabited lives. 
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