Poetry
Ekphrastic Goodwill
With his right eye unblinking and askance
and his left too trusting by far, he stares
and stares at me. Has for forty-odd years,
if you can trust dates scrawled in minium,
stared at someone, beginning with M. Stein,
who, dead now or still alive, painted this
lost self-portrait. Were his glasses misplaced
or was he an expressionist? (Those eyes!)
As in so many things, intention counts
in art, but not enough. Ask Stein, ask me
and all the others whose goodwill did not
keep them from being shunted at day’s end
to this lonely place (him, to lean against
this wall, and me, sideways on a bookshelf).
Fourteen bucks for the two of us and still
no takers. Everyone’s a critic.
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer is a disabled author of books for children and adults. His first book, The Outsider, which takes as its subject his late father's struggles with schizophrenia and homelessness, was published by Broadway Books. Nathaniel has forthcoming/recently published poems with The American Poetry Review, Poetry International, North Dakota Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Red Rock Review and DIAGRAM. Nathaniel lives outside Atlanta with his family.