What We've Lost (On Vermeer's The Concert)
Daniel Pecchenino


It catches a flick
of her wrist, her finger
feeling a note before
it enters her chest
only to fly back out
a second later,
filling the room--

The harpsichord girl
wishing he’d stop staring
so she might be
alone with the music,
sinning in its sound
in front of the painting
of a whore grinning--

And the man looking
through her, around
the world and into our
backs so we know
how it feels to be
exposed before
disappearing completely.

About the author:
Daniel Pecchenino lives in Hollywood and teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He is the Reviews Editor at Dialogist, and his poetry and criticism have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Hawai’i Pacific Review, Southern Spaces, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and other publications