I Envy Them, His Mutilated Art
By Jennifer Juneau

Objects take on different occupations
Under the blue studio grass light.  By blade & whetstone

Multifaceted tackle obscured in a scuttle
Of liquid glitz becomes a victim of the stiletto.

The carving of a morning watered down with
Prolix rain slobbers over the vicinity

Of plate & goblet.  What I hold out for him.
My heart thumps as he thrives & sculpts

Out a living: a bleating strum-
Puppet frazzled from his fray of chipped prizes,

Kitsch among the ruins of rainwire.
I tremble in marble gardens

A cool kind of labor-daughter,
Clingy in a charitable sense.  I assist his half-art,

Its leprosy I love,
The abundance, the reckless breakage.

A cracked bust soaked over, glad for a cold snap
Bends to the broken lamb deciding its limbs. 

I’ve never broken like this.
The stunted growth of sculpture attempts to solidify him. 

Hurly-burly fragments of cement often lament,
But I praise my elephantine god who outshines all constellations. 

Under a convent of stars, let everything break.  I’ll carry his name,
All flax & floss, & exult in my gain.  Marred beauty’s loss.

Jennifer Juneau was a 2006 National Poetry Series finalist for her collection of poems, More Than Moon. Her work has appeared in many journals, including American Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Cincinnati Review, Seattle Review andVerse Daily. The recipient of two prizes from the California State Poetry Society, she lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

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