Listen to S. Brook Corfman read this poem.

The mirror I feel best about now
is the blank television, how
it is wide and smoothed
like one of Monet’s waterlilies,
as if there is a dark pond between
me and the me on the other side.
I can sit while I look into it, like
at MoMA, or the Tuileries.
It fits more easily into a photograph.
I turn myself into something like
a painting or a video installation hanging
at MoMA or the Tuileries, which
is more interesting to pay attention to
over time. You can destroy a painting
by getting it a little wet, though it is harder but not
impossible to destroy a television the same
way. I was so afraid of surgery
because of a phone call with my mother
that haunts me, that she doesn’t remember,
but I have had minimal pain. Things happen
when you are ready for them to happen,
sometimes, as practice. You are not
necessarily stronger or more capable
than you think but you might be.
When my partner goes out of town
I watch Practical Magic and get briefly
really into minimalist electronic music.
In the dark car between Nicole and
Sandra’s faces I can see my hair
but not my face, at least during the day.
This valuation of my hair over my face—
I think it is the closest I have come
to dysphoria, to its meaning.
All my poems were about me, even when
they seemed not to be, Kelly even said
I don’t think of you as the speaker
of your poems, so I made them more explicit.
No one doubts Monet made his paintings.
Their garden still exists; my mom and I walked
through it. Though most artists do not have
such definite domains. When I showed up
for my procedure, the kind nurse
who asked if I had Botox because
my forehead was perfect, though this was all she
could see of my face—she said she needed
to talk to someone on the phone, in real time,
before I could go under, to make sure
I wouldn’t drive myself home.
My partner was asleep, but my friend wasn’t,
and I was so grateful to hear her clear voice
on the line, shockingly, irrefutably awake.