Self-Portraits, by Devon Balwit

Self Portrait 2, by Ivan Albright (USA), 1981.

Self-Portraits

Twenty times the artist revisited the wreckage of his face
the way I do certain photographs—the dead stacked like 
cordwood at Buchenwald, the naked girl running from 
napalm at Trang Bang, the suited man plummeting on 9/11.
These people knew death first hand, were its messengers.  
Like Terence, Albright claims through his blasted faces: 
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.  “Nothing 
human is alien to me—even if I have become an alien 
to myself.”  I bow to Albright’s bravery.  I still stagger
when I face my corruption in the mirror—my waist given 
out like rotten elastic, my skin creped, my once thick hair 
stubble on a razed field.  Each of his portraits catalogues 
the horror anew—age spots, puffiness, wrinkles, balding, 
fear, rheumy eyes.  Each one bellows:  I am staring down 
the worst of it and still, Homo Faber, I create.  In a world 
that worships youth, what is more gruesome than an old 
woman—unsexed, blown?  Yet, like Albright, I would 
revisit my demise in endless variations, even as he did, 
until his final days, reduced and reduced until all that 
remained were his fierce eyes.  Perhaps my poems will 
distill me, godlike, to a single word, my own yod-hey-vav-hey. 

Devon Balwit

Devon Balwit is a poet and educator from Portland, Oregon, who learned to love art from her artist parents.  Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, among them: 3 elements, 13 Myna Birds, Anti-Heroin Chic, Dream Fever Magazine, Dying Dahlia Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Free State Review, MAW, Rat's Ass Review, Rattle, Red Paint Hill Publishing, Referential, Serving House Journal, The Cape Rock, The Literary Nest, The Yellow Chair, Timberline Review, vox poetica, and Vanilla Sex Magazine.  She welcomes contact from her readers.