Poetry International Poetry International
Poem

Leanne O’Sullivan

SELF PORTRAIT

SELF PORTRAIT

SELF PORTRAIT

This blank paper is the one good thing.
I want to fill it with colour, soundlessness
like a heart that shuts with slow murmurings.
I feel myself slipping into that whiteness.
My dumb legs, my red hair pale by moonlight
as I doze into a laudanum pod,
secretly happy, blooming in the night
though the cold surrounds my bed.

This is the woman as God has created her,
this is the woman I am outdoing.
She is a ghost the more I see her.
Her eyes dry against my breath. She is moving
from me into this true radiance while
I stare.  I don’t move, the heart stops its flood
of rust and the mirror crackles to sand.
My babe, the brush is slipping from my hand.
Close

SELF PORTRAIT

This blank paper is the one good thing.
I want to fill it with colour, soundlessness
like a heart that shuts with slow murmurings.
I feel myself slipping into that whiteness.
My dumb legs, my red hair pale by moonlight
as I doze into a laudanum pod,
secretly happy, blooming in the night
though the cold surrounds my bed.

This is the woman as God has created her,
this is the woman I am outdoing.
She is a ghost the more I see her.
Her eyes dry against my breath. She is moving
from me into this true radiance while
I stare.  I don’t move, the heart stops its flood
of rust and the mirror crackles to sand.
My babe, the brush is slipping from my hand.

SELF PORTRAIT

Sponsors
Gemeente Rotterdam
Nederlands Letterenfonds
Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds
Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver Fonds
Lira fonds
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