Sunday - September 6, 2020 - From our poetry archives: “Self Portrait as a Still Life” - Liz Adams - Issue No. 4 - Summer 2018.

Extending our look back at the work of the figurative painter, poet, and humanist, Liz Adams; we offer “Self Portrait as a Still Life,” the companion poem to “Linens,” which held the space for yesterday’s Daily.

As we inch closer and closer to autumn’s beginning, with the layers of all that’s already happened in 2020 still lingering in our hearts and minds, the entire city feels “flush with a whorl of nowness.”

- Photography by Emily Fishman

---

Self Portrait as a Still Life

I’ll be the robin’s-egg blue
pitcher in my mother’s pantry ––

Where I would search for silver
and linens on fine Sundays.

Or, given the choice, a pink peony
flush with a whorl of nowness.

I’ll speak to you boldly with my hues:
titanium white, quinacridone rose.

One hundred petals of a story ––
each ruffled and veined,

Leading to my egg-yolk
center of golden occasions.

Cup me in your hands, bury
your face in my perfumed core

Where the colors congregate
before fading at the edges.

Set me in the blue pitcher,
let the right light catch.