“All such talismanic uses of photographs express a feeling both sentimental and implicitly magical: they are attempts to contact or lay claim to another reality.”
–Susan Sontag
1.1 motherwell
ravens and spiders perch watching
upon hidden shapes of words blurred
redactions black bouldered mute
the least possible answer erased
crushed beneath it all a swimmer
struggles to emerge or submerge
1.2
to the left in a blue hazy field
a woman’s ghost screams thinly
before a partial door frame
or perhaps a window where
vague light draws shadows
like a slow breath’s inhalation
1.3
hints of black flames
char a cauldron
as distant fires burn
banks during riots
random with meaning
a man’s shape’s absorbed
until no difference
beyond an evanescence
like fumes boiling hot
into the desolate air
fat swathes of lightning
vague and tangled
gash a path in the dark
while molten slag flows cold
a velvet tapestry of blood
2.1 surreptitious keyholes
down long vacant hallways
past thinly veiled windows
through suggestions of doors
into stark grey rooms
unexplained visions lie
framed and then framed
for you and then for you
again and then again
like mirrors in mirrors
open unsuspecting exposed
a sudden focus like an iris’s
opened dark desire for light
all else falls away blurred
like someone’s vague childhood
fragmented without context
2.2 projection room
on another wall
as if through a window
as if across an alleyway
as if to another window
as if a framed outtake
of a movie still
sliced from the film
then left on the floor
a young man lies
uncomfortable
his back towards you
as a faceless adult
possibly a parent
holds an open book
or some blurred picture
almost an admonishment
for which you feel guilt
for someone other than you
delineated without context
3 self-portraits and candids
even as themselves
they are not themselves
they become us as we
turn to shadows
the object as subject
as subject to object
tight prisms reflect
origami’s neat folds
you view our center
as if a distance
enclosed within
yourself as another
we dress the part
a film still frozen
yet still no film
but mundane dramas
like other family’s photos
strange yet comfortable
in the discomfort
we feel about each other
4 japanese sex hotels
staged rooms
await set players
we provide scripts
within given frames
as well as players
to perform parts
out of character
for our set lines
lines we know
but never would
trip off our tongues
as if our very own
without this space
opened here
5 every atom of me
manifest
between worry and joy
transitions of time
without time
we change into ourselves
in each moment
then again
unfold
6 sorrow
through it all we walk
as if through an amoeba
music haunts the walls
a herniated chant
calling and calling and calling
each day into being
like the slow onset of tears
(August 14, 2015)
subtext 