David Fine
I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone,
because I am the person I know best.
- Frida Kahlo
This is my body:
five-foot-nine inches of tissue
draped over a
temple of bone.
It squirms, shivers,
needs. Hands
and heels,
entrails and groin, ache, pulse,
desire and hurt.
I look,
but neurotic
neurons demand
quixotic veilings, transcendent
tapestries, Cartesian coverings
which cloak,
choke. So I name the milquetoast, brave
the despondent, sanguine. The mind's
eye defines the edges,
make ups the dents, dimples
pimples and pus. Beauty,
Being—
but
sometimes in the dark
I see the dirt
which collects beneath
cuticle-covered fingernails.
There, I take on flesh.
Fearlessly
I pen the hair
that sprouts in all
the wrong places, the
popsicle-stick arms and
flesh-heavy thighs,
the finger that curves
the wrong way,
the hair that falls out
of place and
the ribs which peak
out from skin,
the totalitarian testicles which insist.
Too late
have I loved me.
Fearlessly
I struggle to voice
the hidden,
the dark, the real. I
pan in
to assess the scope of
corporal punishment—body-
mind splitting—
to put the mind on a plate,
to view it,
the brain on a platter,
to know it—and
speak this bulk
concretely.
Fearlessly,
I extend the invitation:
do this in remembrance of me.