Self-Portrait as a Witch
In this 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” the poet T.S. Eliot argues that innovation is always in conversation with tradition. We can see this idea in action in the self-portrait.
We could say the selfie is an innovation on the tradition of self-portrait. Critics have wondered: is this work by Juno Calypso a selfie?
She’s definitely coming in hot with a Whitmanesque “I contain multitudes” meets hydra vibe!
When we turn towards that which has been demonized like women’s sexuality, we find that the monster is a muse.
But sometimes a monster is only a monster.
Self-Portrait as a Chimera
By: Natalie Diaz
I am what I have done—
A sweeping gesture to the thorn of mast jutting from my mother’s spine—spine a series of narrow steps leading to the temple of her neck where the things we worship demand we hurl her heart from that height, still warm, still humming with the holy music of an organ—
We do. We do. We do and do and do.
The last wild horse leaping off a cliff at Dana Point. A hurtling God carved from red clay. Wings of wind. Two satellite eyes spiraling like coals from a long-cold fire. Dreaming of Cortés, his dirty-beard and the burns it left when we kissed. Yet we kissed for years and my savage hair wove around him like braids of smoke.
Skeletons of apples rot the gardens of Thalheim. First snow wept at the windows while I held a man’s wife in my arms. I palmed her heavy breasts like loot bags. Her teeth at my throat like a pearl necklace I could break to pieces. I would break to pieces. Dieb.
A bandit born with masked eyes. El Maragato’s thigh wound glittering like red lace. My love hidden away in a cave as I face the gallows each morning, her scent the bandana around my face, her picture folded in the cuff of my boot.
The gravediggers and their beautiful shoulder blades smooth as shovel heads. I build and build my brother a funeral, eating the dirt along the way—queen of pica, pilferer of misery feasts—hoarding my brother like a wrecked Spanish galleon. I am more cerulean than the sea I swallow each day on the way to reaching out for him, to sing his name, to wear him like a dress made of debris.
These dark rosettes name me Jaguar. These stripes are my slave dress. Black soot. Red hematite. I am filled with ink. A codice, splayed, opened, ready to be burnt in the square—
I am. I am and am and am. What have I done?