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Justin Boening is the author of the collection Not on the Last Day, but on the Very Last, selected for the National Poetry Series, and the chapbook Self-Portrait as Missing Person, winner of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Boening is an instructor at the Columbia University Summer High School Program.

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The Portrait of What Is Not There

by Justin Boening
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I’m tired of painting the portrait of what is not there.
And I should be. The way it is, the way it has to be,
the portrait of what is not there seems too narcissistic
to ever be complete.

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