Self-Portrait, 2085
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Self-Portrait, 2085
He doesn't look so good. Meat and marrow gone.Buttons of his frayed shirt shedding like coins of bonein payment for such cramped real estate, its leasewith no option to buy, his mostly vacant sleevesfallen open in an attitude of What now?Not much from this cutaway view of nothing new.Dust is at home anywhere. But, above, the humof crickets chittering summer's requiempauses, out of respect, for a woman who kneelsby mossy names. An automated bell knellsits know-it-all refrain. What now? Well, who can say.Not him, effaced by the grave's false clemency,his jaw still hinged and gaping, not as if about to speak,but waiting, as ore waits for the pickaxe's spark. [End Page 49]
BRIAN BRODEUR is the author of five poetry collections, including Every Hour Is Late (Measure Press, 2019), and the chapbook Local Fauna (Kent State University Press, 2015). New poems appear Cincinnati Review, Smartish Pace, Southern Review, and 32 Poems. Brian teaches at Indiana University East.
