Winter Class in Self-Portraiture, 1993

Bristle of thunder chortles.
Air smells like a window in a lead paint sill.

Pregnant.
Blue veins trickle up from my white skin sea
hover absently
like hazy bladderwack.

In the red light of a
darkroom
Paper under water, exposing rounded portrait
I find myself pretty
for the first time.

Christina Nation