Self-Portrait as Artemis by Tarfia Faizullah

February 26, 2015   Self-Portrait as Artemis   Tarfia Faizullah

It wasn’t long before I rose into the silk of my night-robes and swilled the stars and the beetles back into sweetness—even my fingernails carry my likeness, and I smudge the marrow of myself into light. I whisper street- car, ardor, midnight into the ears of the soldier so he will forget everything but the eyes of the night nurse whose hair shines beneath the prow of her white cap. In the end, it is me he shipwrecks. O arrow. My arms knot as I pluck the lone string tauter. O crossbow. I kneel. He oozes, and the grasses and red wasp knock him back from my sight. The night braids my hair. I do not dream. I do not glow.            Copyright © 2015 by Tarfia Faizullah. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “We recover ourselves through the stories of others. Homer refers to Artemis as ‘Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals.’ In myself, I see her wildness and her desire to weigh both vengeance and compassion.” — Tarfia Faizullah   Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam(Southern Illinois University Press, 2014). She teaches at the University of Michigan and lives in Detroit. Most Recent Book by Faizullah   Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014) "Complaint of Achilles’ Heel" by Charles Jensen "Self-portrait as Thousandfurs" by Stacy Gnall "The Last Known Sighting of the Mapinguari" by Traci Brimhall Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006,Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.