from A German Autumn
iv Gerhard Richter paints his daughter
Sitting there
watching
shadows huddled
in the corner
he saw
toes stepping
into the studio
a girl
turning away
at the edge
of the window
a sparkle
in the plait
at the nape of her neck
*
she saw him dragging a brush
– a blurry weave of black and white –
over the still-wet surface
sorrow for the people who died
so young and so crazy for nothing
he said
Pnina Shinebourne won the Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2014 and her pamphlet A Suburb of Heaven won the Venture/flipped eye poetry pamphlet award 2014. She is studying for a PhD at the Royal Holloway. Her previous pamphlet Radioactive was published in 2013.