How can any of this language be beautiful?
The body a geometry of stone & styrofoam,

                                                —or did the portraits come first?

—; everything.                         I strain to grip
                         any metaphors.

Shadows tied neck-to-neck, tangle on the drywall,
                          prisming into each other—transliteration—bound(less)—:
                            cuboid in the grasp of the vast.

           Vantaged sideways, form unhides, concedes
             the grain of its particulars             yet head-on, questioning our seeing,—

                                                           Thorns among the vines of fog : this is loathing.

—Scutoids flatten into cheeks, strange
            spheres beneath

& ovals sculpt sharper points—:
                                               how my face changes.—& the mirror,

flicking light,

                       like a crumb

Listen to the poet read “CUBIST SELF-PORTRAIT :: CUBIST SELF-PORTRAIT”

Dennison Ty Schultz is a queer poet, teacher, and graduate of the University of Missouri–Kansas City’s MFA program. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter, New Delta Review, Black Warrior Review, Split Lip Magazine, Ninth Letter, and DIAGRAM, among others, and it has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets.