Incomparable
2020
He painted a portrait of his mother:
Myriads of irregular shapes
coloured by prismatic acrylics
frolicking on thin paper in excitement
from using his new paint set.
His chest swelled at the ostentatious tints
along with his mother’s puffery.
But his sister burst into a harsh, derisive chortle
when she espied the portrait blu-tacked on
the refrigerator door.
Compared to her framed and refined
brushstrokes that adorned all the walls of their house,
his art was only unwanted graffiti,
a dejected picture inferior in the background.
He glared sourly at the Mary Cassatt of the family.
She knew he was no Van Gogh or Claude Monet,
just dashed hopes of expressionism and surrealism.
A Picasso in the warm-up zone.