A Self-Portrait

By Hibah Shabkhez
Winter 2019 | Poetry

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

Tao Te Ching (Ursula K. Le Guin rendition)

reviewed by Kathleen Nelo

... Previous translations did the job of converting the ancient Chinese into English, but to Le Guin, they felt awkward and clumsy; the beauty and elegance of the poetry in the text was lost ...

I See You (Excerpt)

by B.R. Yeager

... The sun drowned behind the mountains and the sky went bloody then black. I covered my ears with my palms ...