WEBVTT

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So I and several other
friends from town, Ander--

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I'm not sure who else were
invited by Nicole Walker

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to participate in
a project where

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we responded to
paintings by artists

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and they were posted as
conversations in Huffington

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Post and I got to respond
to some self-portraits

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by the painter Don
Bachardy and they

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were these craggy explorations
of his aging face.

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They were astonishing
portraits, and this is

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the poem that came from that.

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"The Mirror"

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"Once I had a cat who studied
himself in the mirror.

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He didn't know what it was in
there, staring back at him,

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but he couldn't stop looking
because the face never turned

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away, and eyes meeting
eyes, want more seeing.

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It's already dark.

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No moonlight.

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No whippoorwill, the bird
that tormented my childhood,

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refusing to take on the
night without incessant song.

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That bird must have been
the size of a fire hydrant,

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I thought then, but
learned later it was just

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a pip of feathered
life with a voice

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insistent as the
news, that continuity

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of disaster and argument
to which we all belong.

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Bomb and recruiting office,
stoning in Public Square,

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crude oil in everyone's hair.

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To mosque, or not to mosque?

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Don't turn away.

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It's just the brute world
that will outlive us,

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the lean hard muscle
of it, flexing.

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But the birds don't belong.

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They are settling into the
night, their feathered quilts,

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ready-made.

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Some of them are rising out of
their bodies, whole categories

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of bodies and into the
being of non-being,

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where of course,
we're all headed

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after a few more parties and
fixations of eyes upon eyes.

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But first, who doesn't want
to make something of it?

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The clutch of childhood's
solitary rages, and the way

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the face begins to cave
in on itself with age,

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so that it looks like an
Arizona landscape, all contour

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and defile, telling the
outcome of its story

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to everyone, leaving
out a few details

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so that a person might
stare at himself and say,

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don't I know you from somewhere?

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You look so familiar.

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And yet--"

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