Self-Portrait as Diana Rigg One-Liner

after Paisley Rekdal


No green bean girl. No limber cucumber.
I’m ample-angled. A gamble in bangles.
Madrigal in a cramped catsuit made
indelible. I’m fractal, flammable,
a fabular handful of arpeggios.
Cupid still visits me. I’m emblem
and actual, sequined, chromatic.
I dance a red fandango into embers.
I’m a naughty old bag, a wild
December. Keep your bowler on.
I’m Jupiter’s daughter, a triple moon
Dame in low-heeled sandals.
Heft the Prosecco. Light a candle.
I’ve still got a scandal left in me.

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Janet Jennings’ poetry and flash fiction have appeared in 32 Poems, Baltimore Review, Nimrod, Shenandoah, and Verse Daily, among others. She is the author of the chapbook, Traces in Water. For twenty years she owned and ran Sunspire, a natural foods company. Janet lives in San Anselmo, California, with her husband and twin daughters.