The Cult of Egon Schiele

Once, all the beauty I wanted
had sadness as its base, and maybe
this was because I could not
imagine myself less than half sad
or more than middling pretty.

Or maybe I can fault art. 
In my wallet’s built-in booklet 
of plastic sleeves, I carried
a wallet-sized Egon Schiele, 
and knowing so little of the body
and its bones did not stop me
wanting to descend his ribs,
to use his clavicles as climbing
holds — I, who could not tell
a tragic past from a velvet cape.

The error of my ways was not
that I feigned to suffer. It was that
I, fain to suffer, knew no beauty
apart from an unforgiving art,
all possession and dispossession.

ξ

Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and Poetry, as well as other journals and magazines.