Portrait of the Poet Viewed Through a Blind Spot
I’m sad and also desperate, alone and also ill-dignified. I rest my hands below my chin, and think about flags instead of posing for a portrait. Let me hang a flag that is factual and true. A flag that says we raced leaf boats, we sang morning songs . A tiny flag by a front door that depicts a pastiche of a cat in a garden. I pledge allegiance to the flag that is a black cat, to the flag that is Winnie the Pooh untethered in a fresh meadow of anyone’s design after 100 years of captivity in the Acres of Copyright Law. My allegiance is to sound and not silence. Loudness is a feeling set free. We are all free now, just like Winnie. I must meet myself inside the words – I am afraid. I must pledge allegiance to my memories that I look back to on Facebook. And to the Republic of Instagram, come back to where my children are small and I can hold them – in my arms, indivisible, lift them off the ground. Only the a i r and I know the truth. Love is a leviathan. But this was before you/I/he/I/I/she/you/I wrecked it all with dire voice core vic/e and die
Chrissy Stegman is a poet from Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has been featured in various journals, most recently Rejection Letters, Gone Lawn, and Blue Heron Review. She is the recipient of the 2022 Patricia Bibby Idyllwild Arts scholarship for poetry and placed second for the 2022 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize. She is a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee.