Postcard I almost send to an almost lover

 

 

Krakow, Poland

 

I try to write about Schindler’s

factory, the portraits of people

saved, the wall of faces gray

 

and grave, but I don’t.

I know I have nothing

to say that their gaze

 

does not already convey.

I try to write about Poland’s

dragon, the subtle slut

 

shame of talon and flame.

Try to be glib, to write

He only eats beautiful

 

virgins, so don’t worry

about me! Instead, I

think of how, in Czech,

 

“to paint” and “to love”

are only one vowel

away: malovat; milovat.

 

The salutation alone

is written. I paint

you, I paint you, I paint you.

 

 

 

Emily Wilson is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of North Carolina Wilmington as a graduate teaching assistant. Her poetry, translations, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Asymptote, Bustle, Green Mountains Review, [pank], Passages North, and The Raleigh Review, among others. Nominated for inclusion in the Best New Poets series and for an AWP Intro Journals Award, she received the 2013-2014 Kert Green fellowship, was first runner-up in the 2014 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and won the 2012 Emma Howell Memorial Poetry Prize.