Professor and Daughter

Sean M. Rumschik

a time, he is working, she is bent in the distance—
half-sees her in the kitchen, she is cleaning out the drain.
at the desk, he is sweating, sketching finger positions
on his Buxtehude score. his glasses are slipping,
his fingertips press, and step, like a spider
“a spider stepping and pausing on the desk!”

SEAN M. RUMSCHIK has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and an Sc.B. in neuroscience from Brown University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, RHINO Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, Interim, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.