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.

The Portrait of What Is Not There

by Justin Boening

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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