Alice Neel: Self Portrait
by Mary Ann Rockwell

Butt-naked at eighty, in her satin
wing-back chair, she might as well be a bowl
of fruit. Still, she wields the brush like a wand.
Her S-curves exhale consonance, and the howl
that flesh is heir to spells it like it is.
Take a look: arched poker-gaze notwithstanding,
the artist knows her skin folds hold secrets
she’d be puerile not to share; knows, too: standing
breast-to-drooping-breast with the Venus
of Willendorf, she'd hold her own. The frank
pear of the belly that bore four, lost two,
softens toward earth now, boulders over the flaps
that casually guard her smoldering pit.
You think she went for shock, but that’s not it.




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