Elise Hempel

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Antique

This crude old inkwell filled
with nothing now but dust,
a glowing light from the west –
I lift it, see the scrolled

table, her high-necked gown,
thin shoulders as she bends
and dips the long pen in,
slowly setting down

each careful letter like lace
beneath the lamp's soft flame,
the flourish of her name
forgotten now, her voice

long gone but in the curved
blue glass, this wisp of stain,
one brilliant, lilting line
still trying to be heard.

Elise Hempel grew up in suburban Chicago and has worked as an editor, proofreader, copywriter and university English instructor. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Measure, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Evansville Review, and The Midwest Quarterly, as well as in Ted Kooser's weekly column, American Life in Poetry. She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the winner of the 2015 Able Muse Write Prize in Poetry and has been a finalist or semi-finalist for several book awards. In 2014 her chapbook, Only Child, was published by Finishing Line Press, and her first full-length collection of poems is available from Able Muse Press. She lives in central Illinois.