SELF-PORTRAIT AS WOMAN
by Mary Stone Dockery
Before they came for me, I exfoliated in white wine,
watched the glass empty itself like it had every
time before, watched the way my hands exposed
the blue-red veins beneath the skin, how my
fingers would keep moving, touching buttons
or peeling the label from the bottle, or reach
for an invisible choke in the air, grasp, release
nothing. I had waited a long time for their smiles,
their long arms, white teeth. I had waited a long
time to be held like that in someone’s arms,
as if being lifted for the first time. And they took
me, carried me into a place where my body
disappeared slowly into grains of paint, colors
and canvas. There I was able to watch them all,
my hair never blowing up in the wind, the wine
bottle on the table before me never opening,
never spilling, their faces before me large, eerie,
my ability to see more in their pores
than they in me.
SOURCE: The Montucky Review (August 25, 2011).
IMAGE: “Head of a Woman” by Pablo Picasso (1946).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Stone Dockery‘s poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of journals, including Mochila, Gargoyle, > kill author, Midwestern Gothic, Weave Magazine, The Medulla Review, scissors and spackle, and The Montucky Review. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award in Poetry. She is also the recipient of the Thomas J. O’Donnell Award for creative nonfiction and an honorable mention for the Vic Contoski award in fiction. Her poetry collections include Mythology of Touch (2012) and One Last Cigarette (Honest Publishing, 2013). A Pushcart Prize nominee, she received an MFA from the University of Kansas in 2012. Visit her at marystonedockery.wordpress.com.
Silver Birch Press 