A Self-Portrait
When from blank swathes of canvas I learned
To ask: 'How do I seem to mine own eyes?'
First to nature’s mirror, water, I turned,
And besought the lake to tell me no lies.
So earnestly for all the truth it strove,
It trembled: and into shifting ripplets
Parcelled my face; into prominence drove
Now eyes, now nose, now mouth, now hair-ringlets.
Stricken, I sought then man’s mirror of glass,
Melted sand silvered to limpidity,
And taxed in its self-shaped prison to pass
Back each eye its rays with alacrity
So I looked: but found only the dulled gaze
Of a wrinkled stranger; my cold shiver
Cried: is it thus you see me in your glaze
Or how I see myself in the mirror?
Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in The Mojave Heart Review, Third Wednesday, Petrichor, and a number of other literary magazines.
Other Works
Drain Songs
reviewed by Matt Lee
... This unpredictability is what makes Maierhofer so exciting to read. Strings of declarative statements written in all caps read like chaotic prose poems ...
The Peacock That Could Fly
by Lucy Zhang
... When the daughter danced, she felt her arms grow feathers nearly as tall as herself, and as she spun, the floor disappeared ...