• Bridget Egan
SUBJECT TO SCRUTINY

 

In the distorting mirror of your eyes

I search myself and see no I reflected;

On that convexity the image lies

 

not as it seems, but seeming Other/wise.

Likeness unliked; unlike and still connected

in the distorting mirror of your eyes.

 

Shards of complexity re-crystallise,

dissolve, diffuse, reform, shift undetected

on that convexity. The image lies

 

upon, beyond, beneath. To realise

what was, is, may not be, or what’s expected

in the distorting mirror. Of your eyes’

 

deceptive clarity, mis/trustful, wise,

(suspend belief longed-for) we long suspected

On that convexity the image lies.

 

Object of my own gaze, I fantasise

The shifting self, subject and unsubjected;

On that convexity, the image lies

In the distorting mirror of your eyes.

 

 

 

 

named

 

Here, now, collecting the conference pack

They give me my name, in a plastic re-usable shell

(labelled DURABLE 8006), which I pin to myself.

 

My name locates me in something

I hardly recognise –

a family, dispersed;

a life charted by insignificant events;

a history, half-known, little understood.

 

I wear my name as a shield against being known.

Will I talk here? Will I be heard or seen?

I am here to absorb thoughts;

anonymous sponge

obediently museumed by a name

 

What am I here? a scholar? a student?

Where is the singer, the dancer,

the weaver of forms?

Well; I chose to be here,

Observer; an anonymity behind a name

 

At the end of the day, I return them the durable plastic

and discard my name.