You can’t make them love you, no matter how artfully you betray yourself

by Jerry Dennis

[This is part of a series of found poems entitled “The Art of the Self-Portrait”]

You can’t make them love you, no matter how artfully you betray yourself
portray yourself.

Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.*

Leave most of the canvas empty for effect. It’s the negative space
around your life. Room to breathe. A little taste of infinity.

The face should be emphatic, should convey an unhurried intensity. As if
there is plenty of time. As if there is plenty

Make the eyes come alive. Everything else can be in ruins.

Include all you’ve accomplished, claimed, built, torn apart, stolen,
given away, misplaced, burned, flushed, eradicated. The entire inventory.

Loved ones, lost ones, childhood, end of innocence. Death

doesn’t care if you waste a canvas, waste
a thousand canvases.

Choose a good frame.

*e.g., Daybreak/nightfall, the teeming sea, equatorial deserts and their grains of sand, labyrinth, snow, bunch of grapes, two mirrors multiplied endlessly, horse with flowing mane, tiger, Persian astrolabe, postcard, nutshell, earth, the universe.

[Footnote source: “The Aleph,” Jorge Luis Borges]

Jerry Dennis’s books—including The Living Great Lakes, The Windward Shore, and, forthcoming from University of Michigan Press, Up North in Michigan—have been widely translated and have won numerous awards. His poetry and brief prose have appeared recently in PANK, Michigan Quarterly Review, New World Writing, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He lives with artist Gail Dennis in northern Michigan. He can be found at www.jerrydennis.net.