Rhoni Blankenhorn’s ‘Mirror’
Rhoni Blankenhorn confronts her changing self, in a poem from LARB Quarterly no. 47, ‘Security.’
By Rhoni BlankenhornDecember 29, 2025
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This poem is a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 47: Security. Become a member for more fiction, essays, criticism, poetry, and art from this issue—plus the next four issues of the Quarterly in print.
¤
Mirror
I was just beginning to feel
the way people looked at me.
I derived power
from being a symbol. A girl,
her face half lilac,
half yellow, her reflection darker.
I taped her to the wall
above my childhood bed.
There are so many things
I’ve put into my mouth,
and things I have yet to.
On the table, tulips turn themselves
inside out, show off their black-blue eyes,
their dusty pistils, bend their huge pink heads
towards the window, so doll-like
I can’t look without laughing.
I make piles of clothes to give away,
meditate on the opposite wall—
pink, with speckles.
I am beginning to look my age,
which terrifies me.
¤
Featured image: Édouard Vuillard, In Front of the Mirror, 1915. Bequest of Edith Malvina K. Wetmore, Yale University Art Gallery (1966.80.31). CC0, artgallery.yale.edu. Accessed December 24, 2025. Image has been cropped.
LARB Contributor
Rhoni Blankenhorn is the author of Rooms for the Dead and the Not Yet, a poetry collection that won the Trio Award and was published by Trio House Press in July 2025.
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