A MATTER OF TOUCH

by Martina Reisz Newberry


How skillfully and perceptively Vermeer captured women in their private moments! He saw their faces—really saw them—even as they existed in the company of men—as canvases in their own right, their eyes, intelligent and masking all the mysteries of the feminine, divine or not. 
 
See the servant’s knowing look as she hands her mistress “The Love Letter,” the anticipation of its contents on the lady’s face, hoping that what is in it is what she wants to hear. See the look of faint annoyance on the face of the “Girl Interrupted at Her Music.” It is the face of the world’s women whose personal pursuits are always considered interruptible. 
 
There is the dreaming face of the “Woman Holding a Balance”—a face that suggests her thoughts are elsewhere, maybe on balancing the universe, certainly not on the balance in front of her, one that weighs gold or flour or lint from her husband’s waistcoat. 
 
There is a very different kind of face, something wise and wonderful in the scornful smile of “The Procuress,” the face of a sly madonna. Her disdain for the weakness of men and the rude nonchalance of a customer’s hand on her breast appear to be—shall we say—non-issues.

It’s all right, say her bright eyes, I’ll have his money in my purse and he will go home in the morning, reeking of gin and fornication. His touch doesn’t matter.


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Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent book is Glyphs, available now from Deerbrook Editions. She is the author of Blues For French Roast With Chicory, Never Completely Awake (from Deerbrook Editions), Where It Goes (Deerbrook Editions), Learning By Rote (Deerbrook Editions)  and Running Like A Woman With Her Hair On Fire: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press).