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Self Portrait

by Amanda Woodard

When we got the eviction notice

the one we knew we couldn’t

fight, we sold our TV, our VHS

tapes, our favorite movies.

 

We didn’t make much.

 

Some women from church said

God told them to pity us & take us in

to their sturdy, brick houses with extra

empty rooms.

 

We made ourselves portable

threw away family photographs

portraits of me as a kid

 

posing in front of those cheesy

greenscreen backdrops

the flash shining off my glasses

my smile, big & dorky.

 

We threw them away & it was easy

to mimic those pretty girls at school

who slept in clean sheets at night.

About the Author

Amanda Woodard is a freelance poet, essayist and ghostwriter, as well as an MFA candidate at Antioch University. She studied Social Science and Journalism at the University of North Texas and attended writing workshops at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference and Writing Workshops Dallas. Her work has been performed in Oral Fixation and published in Ten Spurs, eris & eros, Cathexis Northwest Press and Button Eye Review.

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