Poem for Tuesday and Washingtonian Sunset

Mirror Theory
By Lucia LoTempio

How-to
with a wolf head
in it: magic

says rub
tooth to your gum, sleep
with cheek
matted to your

sweat—first you
must kill it.
Post

a letter of carved
wood that sings
like howl.

What happens after
the cast—where
to dispose
of used up

fur coil
and red.

Kept saying
new when I had

looked for nothing.
There’s a whole

word for wind
in France,
northeast and dry;

I have not been
given one
to say how

canvas cuts
a tree’s bottom
and top
with grey poplars.

My stretch of cells
still repeating.

The nuns
made my body
a holy cathedral,
impenetrable—yet

a temple is a widest
entrance; place
of herded into.

Still have
a wolf and it’s still
breathing. From its mouth
crawls another.

Then from that,
it happens again; throat
combed by teeth.

It became
we and I was

a portrait
with many hearts in it.

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"I had been reading through the archived letters of Vincent van Gogh’s brother, drawn to the intermingling language used to talk about art and desire," LoTempio told Poets.org. "This poem came out of a concern around the difficulty of approximating a self-portrait, how the first step of pinning down a shifting self requires a messy trickery." Seemed like a good Lupercalia poem.

I had a busy Monday -- work, laundry, a lunchtime Rayquaza raid, stops at a couple of stores, then since I was meeting Paul plus Karen and Jim at Tara Thai, I took a walk around Washingtonian Lake in the still-lovely weather that is now getting cold again, saw many geese and the sunset, and caught 10 Wailmers. We had a nice dinner, then came home and watched the snowboarding competition!