SELF-PORTRAIT POEMS
We have all seen self-portraits by visual artists—Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait with Cropped Hair,” “Self Portrait with Necklace,” or “Self Portrait with Monkey”—and what interests me in these works is what the artist chooses to highlight in these paintings.
For this writing exercise, you’ll begin with a title:
Self Portrait With ______________ (fill in the blank)
You are welcome to fill in the blank with any current obsession or interesting word/words you like. Try to choose a word that excites you as in this exercise, as you will return to that word many times. Your title can be anything from Self Portrait with Machete to Self Portrait with Mother Teresa. You can use a few words to stretch your subject into something more such as Self Portrait with Broken Coffee Mug or Self Portrait with Winning Lottery Ticket. It is completely up to you.
You are welcome to write a short story, creative non-fiction piece or in the form of a poem. Or for an extra challenge, use the same title for two different genres and see what happens.
_____________
Self Portrait With Optic Neuritis
by Kelli Russell Agodon
The ophthalmologist is looking through me.
On the other side of my eye
is God or a peach and I can’t imagine
laughing again or seeing the purple
birthmark on my daughter’s arm.
When he speaks, I hear shadows.
I hear the empty mouths
of bells. I begin to make promises
to remember long words,
to visit Taos before it is a cloudy city.
On the other side of vision, I can’t imagine
the braiding of nerves inside me,
the light reflecting off an unpainted wall
or the red matter, the rug from India
hanging across the window.
The eye chart hides beneath a haze.
They flip through a book and I am to see
numbers, what I say is: I don’t know,
I don’t know. His assistant leads me
into the waiting room. I hear a man talking
to his child—she must be only two,
her footsteps sound like dancing.
I hear him tell her to follow him,
then say, I think you’ll need to hold my hand.
previously published in In Posse
Also:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/self-portrait
Self-Portrait
I see myself in the shadows of a leaf
compressed to the green blades growing
to a point like the shards of miles of mirrors
falling and cracking to perfect gardens.
I never inspect the withered assumption
of my face’s petty dialogue in raindrops,
the deceptive spreading of the words
oozing from the skin to the edges of water
etched on the ground by gravity and wishing.
Passing for the seriousness of my eye,
platitudes of my white collar or
the perfect posture of my lips, it skirts
from the leaves of the plant hiding me
and sits stoic like stone in my pupil,
mute and unassuming, like Rashi.
To gather myself I will swim naked
in the wind, bending my blind elbows
in circles, stopping now to dance
like the cherubic gold on the ark,
and gather myself from the particles
of this excitement another structure,
one closely resembling the beginning.
Afaa Michael Weaver, “Self Portrait” from Multitudes: Poems Selected & New. Copyright © 2000 by Afaa Michael Weaver. Reprinted by permission of Sarabande Books, Inc.
Source: Multitudes: Poems Selected & New (Sarabande Books, 2000)
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