Postcards, A Self-Portrait

I am searching the merry-go-round of museum cards a typewriter, a man holding his face in the night,

a white urinal. No. No. No. Dancers, frozen on the side of a vase. Maybe? No.

The museum is far from home, so I look for something my mother will like.

Dali’s pointed mustache stops my turning, his big eyes roll out his face like he is wanting to sneeze. I hold back

a tickle in my nose and push the carrousel. I spot Goya’s gory giant. She does not like dark paintings.

She likes royal portraits. She likes masks. She has never like ballerinas. I stop

the revolving postcards. A blue shadowbox, a swan’s neck bent into its back. Everything is blue.

Every tree and every cloud, every leaf, blue and suspended by wire. I cannot.

I go to turn again, but the birds’ beak won’t let me. I pull the card from its place, lift it closer to my face.

I know she will not like it. She will think its figure strange. Just as I think to return the swan, I see another face

an African face, sticking out from the bottom of a pile. The sketched lines of his torso unfinished and disappearing

near the borders. There is no blue. No bird. I buy them both.