This self-portrait was created in response to a poem for Illuminations, a collaborative show of poets and artists. Here is the poem written by Joseph Hutchison:

He had no desire to share

your bus bench—this youth

who prefers his solitude.

He’s happy with his space

on the cold sidewalk, happy



to hunch against an adobe

wall’s soot-stained pink

roughness, squinting

into the Marlboro smoke

that coils up under the bill



of his cap, reading a book

culled from his backpack.

Maybe he was drawn there

by the wall’s graffiti, a scrap

(if your cobwebbed memory



serves) of Nietzsche. Maybe

those very words are what

he’s hunting for, page

by page, in the winter light.

And isn’t he, in fact, you



thirty-some years back?

Alone and liking it, alone

with memories of a father’s

blunt fist and blistering curses:

fuel for the journey. It’s no



wonder you want a glimpse

of his reading matter now.

You imagine cracking a joke,

striking up a give-and-take

with this incarnation



of your gone self—as if

telling him all about books,

about what untrustworthy

walls they make, might help

you both. But look at him:



beyond reach. In the end

one loves one’s desire

and not what one desires.

You wouldn’t have listened,

and neither would he.