Skip to content →

Self-Portrait

I have never seen

(I have never seen

a painting)

a painting I don’t like.

Even small paintings

(SMALL PAINTINGS), even

small paintings of trees I love.

Also Abstracts made

done by the hands of teenagers.

I want one day

   (one day)

to have a portrait

painted, by a painter,

a painter of no

particular particulars

who will take my face

by its squares and

even out its bits

until the whole of it (the all

of its features)

smooths out and down to

nothing, canvas, and I am

puny, and of no

import,

fascinated

as a speck of dirt

in a small painting of teenagers.

Shame | ShameFind it in the library

Copyright © BOA Editions, Ltd 2015
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of BOA Editions LTD.

Published in Devin Becker Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.