A Portrait by Sally Bliumis-Dunn

The Name by Francesco Clemente, 1983.

 A Portrait
                                   
If not for the faces within his face
he would look like an ordinary man:
black close-cropped hair,
dark eyebrows, tapered cheeks,

reddish lips and beige skin.
But there is a face in each of his eyes,
no eyeball, just a face.
And there is a face in each of his nostrils ---

a face in place of his tongue,
a face inside each ear.
These faces within his face
are the bloodless white

of mimes or ghosts.
They are the faces of those
who have named him,
who have shown him to himself.

He cannot speak or see without them
and he hears them in his dreams,
where even the smell of a rose
does not feel quite his own.

Sally Bliumis-Dunn

Sally Bliumis-Dunn is the author of Talking Underwater and Second Skin (Wind Publications, 2007, and 2010). She teaches at Manhattanville College and lives in Armonk, New York.