Self-Potrait in the Nude

1 Minute Read Time

contoured valley — Photo by Roland Szép on Unsplash

To understand what it would be like 
           to remove my clothes
as painters do in portraits of themselves

          I imagine I’m the woman 
who knows her body
            no longer belongs to the young artist

who painted herself before she had children, 
            before her topography was changed
by forces erosive as water and wind,

          and yet she goes on painting it,
the girdle of her earth that is now an etched terrain 
          crossed with silver rivulets.

And hills, I want to say to her.
           Valleys. Then hummocks,
hot springs, hoodoo. What is art about

         if not depression? Uplift? Depression 
again? At which she straightens
        the flesh of her shoulders and neck

to face me before I disappear 
       into landscape,
my favorite state of undress.

Allison Funk

is the author of five books of poems, including her most recent, Wonder Rooms (Free Verse Editions of Parlor Press, 2015). The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she has been published in Poetry, Paris Review, Shenandoah, Image, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. She is professor emerita at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

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