The Modigliani Daughter

Modigliani painted my portrait the century before
my mother hung the poster on her college dorm room wall.

Daydreaming, she stared at my effigy:
tall slender neck, head slightly askew,
straight brown hair tied loosely in a bun,
long skinny nose. She stared for hours

in between studying to become the biologist she did,
imagining herself to be the wife and mother she would,

but never dreaming
she'd absorbed Modigliani's crooked ratios
and years later would conjure me up,
the Modigliani daughter,
graceful and severe.




First published in Children, Church & Daddies.  Nov./Dec. 2013. Vol. 245. Print and online.
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