Vanitas
Janina Karpinska
Every day for twenty minutes, she examines her face in the mirror,
records her likeness in pastels on used-up pages of messy journals
filled with portraits of cross-hatch marks - rapidly scrawled
over words from days past. Obsessively seeking to narrow
the gap where so much is lost between image and self; her now
overshadows what was then; confronts a new rendition each page:
glaring; harshly-coloured; bold; faded; bright; insipid; wild.
Gaze intently focused, sad, appealing; drawn to re-connect;
endeavouring to sit with whatever she sees, for as long as
it takes to capture the image, as faithfully as seen and felt,
and curb the equal, opposing urge to drop the book -
and cut life short.
records her likeness in pastels on used-up pages of messy journals
filled with portraits of cross-hatch marks - rapidly scrawled
over words from days past. Obsessively seeking to narrow
the gap where so much is lost between image and self; her now
overshadows what was then; confronts a new rendition each page:
glaring; harshly-coloured; bold; faded; bright; insipid; wild.
Gaze intently focused, sad, appealing; drawn to re-connect;
endeavouring to sit with whatever she sees, for as long as
it takes to capture the image, as faithfully as seen and felt,
and curb the equal, opposing urge to drop the book -
and cut life short.
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Janina Aza Karpinska has poetry employing a variety of styles published in: London Reader; Magma; Ekphrastic Review; Drawn to the Light; Heron Tree; Poems in the Waiting Room; Raising the Fifth; Epistemic Lit; Lit Shark; Midwest Zen, and Cold Signal amongst others. She lives on the south coast of England.
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