Self Portrait, Castello Bibbiano, Italy, 1999

Propped up against the wall an unhinged door
slants acutely. From behind it two hands
emerge—or are they sinking, its shadow
reclaiming the last human evidence?
If this is a portrait, it’s a portrait
not of a man, but his body’s absence.—

What man is depicted by the absence
of himself? Gradually has the door
erased him, a timelapse of self-portrait.
It has avenged its lost hinges, the hands
it took as trophies give evidence
of his hubris. At right, the door’s shadow

extends. The walls’ corner draws the shadow
away from the door to contrast the absence
of body behind it. No evidence
must mean something. But nothing’s there, the door
hides no thing,. No effort made by the hands
to grasp no thing. Calling this self-portrait

sunders the self—each piece needs a portrait
of its own. Consequently, the shadow
has an equal presence to the hands
and everything else in the room, absence
included. Frayed wiring, empty door
frame, exposed radiator, evidence

comprising a whole body, evidence
of precise intentions. Thus self-portrait
includes tiles and walls as skin, the door
is another limb, the muscled shadow
flexes along the edge of the absence
of the human torso under the hands.

Unaccounted for though are those two hands,
the still anomalous evidence
of the human body amongst the absence
of the rest of his body in the portrait.
Light pours from outside the frame, the shadow
runs from them, the hands framed over the door.

Yet the hands remain, bits of self-portrait
less evidence of self than shadow—
the room filled with the absence and the door.