Back when I was worse than harmless, she loved me, I think,
after I’d spent six weeks disintegrating
myself all over her floor. But who wouldn’t pity such sorry
trade goods? Great stuff! I’d insist, an agent
who believed his own junk, guilelessly swindling the natives
with my heaps of shoddy blankets and clanking
tin doodads. Worn down by my desperate patter she daubed
me onto a scrap of board. Of course I’d expected Great Man
treatment: Albert Camus’ nicotine mope in a sticky impasto
trowelled over Jim Morrison’s divine
whatever. O glimpse of purpose! Potential’s blip! My hat
I’d cocked Napoleonically, draping myself booted
and spurred against the cannon’s muzzle. Above, the angels
twitched aside the fat velvet brocade
of Heaven’s curtain and tilted all their brass to bleat me home . . .
I thought I had it knocked. I thought I had thoughts. I thought
love was technique mastered to snatch for good
some future terminal quench. I was a jack o’ lantern snipped
from a scorched paper bag, snaggle-toothed
with eyes poked out with scissors. But my sputtery little candle
guttered so earnestly! Orange-on-orange, she
made me into a still life: Ersatz Pumpkin with Book and Empty
Beer Bottle. My Prussian blue smirk
she swiped on with her thumb, blending diabolical
puppy’s wag with perpetual childhood flinch. You can’t see
my soul’s quivering jot in it. But it wasn’t that kind of painting.
- My Portrait, Painted by Renée at Indiana University in 1985 - January 16, 2014
