The June 15th prompt in The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, by Kelli Russell Agodon & Martha Silano, is to write a poem in which “someone or something in a painting or a sculpture will be the speaker”. The only thing that came to mind that depicted “someone or something” that could be imagined to have a voice was Frank Auerbach’s Head of J.Y.M. II, which is the painting used for the cover art of Japan’s 1983 live LP, Oil On Canvas.

I can’t look at you directly
forever is my view askance
my features indistinct, frozen

Bold strokes in black and white
edges flecked with grey
but my face is not so simple

I’m known only by my initials
and only by my face
destined to sit alone, forever

There are others like me
their faces can be seen in books
we all exist here, hidden on this shelf 

(15 June 2014)