The Whiteness of Bone, by Devon Balwit

White on White, by Kazimir Malevich (Kiev Governate, now Ukraine), 1918.

The Whiteness of Bone 

White on white. Was a time I wouldn’t 
have seen it, a little snort bursting 

from my nose, up-tilted, at the greyish-
white square, askew on the cream ground. 

Suprematist Composition, 1918, indeed, 
war’s end, and that is all Malevich could 

come up with? So much nothing, a long 
Sunday, hours mounded like dune sand, 

the upward slog, the endless back-sliding. 
Then, I was all noise, rushing to get somewhere, 

not realizing the deception of motion, 
Self always shrouding like the linen skin 

of a dressmaker’s dummy. Now I know: 
this as far as far as I’m going, this the end 

of my leap, all the time in the world 
to explore the gradations between pearl 

and cream, paper and bone, milky and 
opalescent. The dead in the trenches, bone 

white against the bleached scroll of years. 
The pitted surface, the brushstrokes, the 

canvas poking through, plenty for the eyes 
of one grown old enough to glean.

Devon Balwit

Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher from Portland, OR. She has two chapbooks forthcoming--'how the blessed travel' from Maverick Duck Press and 'Forms Most Marvelous' from dancing girl press. Her recent work has found many homes, among them: Oyez, The Cincinnati Review, Red Paint Hill, Timberline Review, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Trailhead Review, and Oracle.