Self-Portrait as Celestograph
after August Strindberg's series, winter 1893–94
But what is it? It is this initial question that providesthe first thrill. Cold stone comes to meet the back.
I sharpen for the light above, the light below. Dropsof dirt and dust fall and rise, fall and rise
to skin, mine a flake of light-sensitive plateat slight remove—lifted by the grass, fallen in the grass.
This has often happened to me. I workin the same way as nature, without a set goal.
I resist the tendency toward even weight. Gravityshould work the way it wants on me. It writes
its name along the tuck of my back as it meets the earth.My name underneath in a lighter hand.
A habit of sky is hard to break. It must be hardto see the earth where you want the night, to be a sign
so constant as to be thought unchanging. I can't just smootha habit over with my palm. But I can look like something else.
I loved the ground best, not the sill; what I lovedwas plating my body open to wait like an eye. I would watch
for the light, but it was the dark that worked me.And I continue to develop: they've changed me by their thumbs,
the stars of inks and grease. I remember everything that had its placeon me. I dip in the developing water, blue and waver, [End Page 144]
dip one end back, one back. I go vibrant underneath:I'm still blue, and green and copper, and at my edges
I red and rust like a sheet of tin. I wanted to beor be believed in. [End Page 145]
Emma Aylor's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sixth Finch, Barrow Street, Yemassee, Poet Lore, and Salt Hill, among other journals, and she is the recipient of Shenandoah's 2020 Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. Raised in Bedford County, Virginia, she currently lives in Lubbock, Texas.
