after Claude Monet’s Les Dindons, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

 

Lest we think it all so serious,

he did paint turkeys.

​

Which, though not platypuses,

are inherently funny. We describe

​

them in waddles, their cluck strut

and poor attempt at peacock,

​

their roving eyes a comedy

of nerves. Even one is without body,

​

making me think of that pigeon

and his noble goal

​

to drive a bus. This one enters left,

bottom of canvas, neck thrust

​

without the legs to prove it,

and another is only half complete,

​

the charcoal line remaining

as if to say, this is too ridiculous

​

to finish. Maybe it was the comic

relief between landscape

​

and wave, French flag

and sailboat. Maybe it was

​

the tap and bow

that got him, the way they seem

​

to retrieve nothingness

in their peck and up, peck and up.

​

Or maybe it was a way to thumb

his nose at the house behind:

​

a rafter of gentle

men inside, smoking cigars

​

and claiming beauty

from the window.

 

 

Julie E. Bloemeke (she/her) is the author of Slide to Unlock (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020). Co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023) she was the 2022 Third Coast Poetry Prize winner and is an associate editor for South Carolina Review.