Portrait
By Jennifer Juneau

Her elliptical figure was a mill for technique.
When her sketched body spoke in charcoal
Your disdain for beauty was divulged

At your fingertips, so that the creative brain in pursuit
Of attention nullified brilliance.  How blind you are!
Who wouldn’t want to flaunt a siren?

Profuse eccentricity is a roughhouse for the eye
And despite how often she sent you scrimmaging
In perplexity for perfection,

You returned to the Molotov cocktail that is her assemblage.
What am I compared to this splitch of art?
Ambition meanders with subzero hands,

The under-ripe brow, over-lit,
An uncomely task of erasing shade to make shadow.
Just look at her mouth.

Can aptitude, like water, be held long
Before it seeps through fingers of self-doubt?
What if I spoke with a mouth like that?

A farrago of mud syllables governing the ticket,
Your gravy train wrung with smudge, why cling
To the grind of major complacence?

Moist palm, rain-sheared, the homely house
Of ransack.  She and I had something else in common
Other than the umbrage of your fine slack.

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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