A Bunch of Pictures Back from the Film Lab

The Four Good Ones

1. New Moistness

Bobbi was as surprised as she could be by the shards of glass that appeared in her lap–-so surprised, in fact, that she did not connect the noise of the window's shattering to the wicked looking splinters with which she was covered. She just aimlessly wondered what they were and where they had come from. Bobbi was so surprised, in fact, that she really didn't hear Eddie as he screamed at her from the other side of newly glassless window nor did she really see the blood sliding out of the inside of his arms and onto her flowers. Then she was afraid to stand or to brush herself, afraid she might get cut.

2. Field Work

Little teeny green cubes of auto safety glass
are scattered at this particular spot along the interstate.
There was an accident here once; someone probably died here once.
If he can lay down flat on the shoulder in the pebbles and dirt,
those little squares of windshield
can catch the light
and that light can then catch his eyes
and he can no longer see the cars at all.
He can only see the light sheeting off their windshields.

3. Broadcast TV No Longer Holds My Interest The Way It Used To

I'm making my own shows now:

She is naked and asleep
which is just about as vulnerable as she ever gets.
She is rolling through the bedclothes and
I know she is dreaming about her hair and her teeth,
about losing them.
Her nightmare causes her to grip her pillow very hard, very tightly.
One artificial fingernail falls away
like a kind of shell caught in a powerful tide.

4. A Point of Convergence / A Point of Departure

I watched her limp out of the surf and at first I thought she'd been bitten by something in the water. She was wincing. She sat down in the dry part of the sand and I came over to see what was wrong. What it was was that there was a long splinter of bluegreen glass angled into her instep. A thrilling, painful sympathy shuddered through me when I knelt beside her. We were both terrified that something was so obviously wrong, that she could be so obviously damaged. She drew her breath in sharply, much more sharply than usual. There was no blood on her foot at all until I worked the sliver from beneath her skin.


(Originally published in Carp, Volume One, Issue 3, 1996)

Cookie In The Picture

She told me she was going shopping and that she might drop over at her aunt's house for a while; she might even stay for dinner. She had been telling me things like that quite a bit. Cookie was a liar.

I followed her until she parked our car and then I followed her while she walked until she went into a building. I went in a Koffee Shoppe and I started smoking cigarettes until the waitress bullied me into ordering. I figured I'd be there a while (knowing Cookie like I knew Cookie) so I asked her, the waitress, for koffee, another and cleaner ashtray, and a new glass of V-8 vegetable cocktail. I tipped her, the waitress, five dollars and did not see her again. Didn't expect to.

I waited for what seemed like hours and, coincidentally, it was hours that I waited but I was ready when she, Cookie, came out. I grabbed my Nikon and I was out the door and out on the street to meet her.

"What are you doing?" she shrieked but I had her in the frame and her mouth was an ugly oval when I hit the shutter.

"What are you doing? What are you doing here?" she continued to shriek and I continued to hit the shutter; I was snapping shots like crazy.

"I wanted to see a whore," I told her from behind the camera, the Nikon, and I kept pressing the button. The auto-wind was screaming and everything was green-light as far as aperture and shutter were concerned.

"Stop it!" she screamed. "Stop it! Stop it!"

I ignored her, her words, and concentrated on her image, the image in the viewfinder. The few people who had noticed us ignored us and I kept hitting the shutter, the button that made the lens open and close around the image that would become Cookie when she was printed.

"I wanted to see a whore, " I told Cookie. "I wanted to see what a whore looks like after she's whored around. I wanted to see her in the frame."

And I took some more pictures.

"How does it feel, baby?" I continued. "How does it feel to be famous? Show me how it feels to be famous. You're going to be so famous."

"I can't believe you're doing this," Cookie sobbed and she slid down with her back against the wall behind her, the wall of her new boyfriend's apartment building, down to the dirty sidewalk in front of her new boyfriend's apartment building while her old boyfriend took some photographs of her sliding.

"That's it. That's it, baby," I encouraged her. "Work with me here. Work with me."

I kept snapping, kept looking for the best angles and the good shine off her tears, off the strings of snot and saliva across her face. It was a face I loved. I made some beautiful images that afternoon, I developed some beautiful prints, and Cookie's never seen them. She's never even asked.

ASA 400

When I look at these photographs
I see the way she sees me,
the ways she is able look or, rather,
the way she is able to see the things she sees
(texture, color, contrast, shadow, me).

That nose and that chin were mine
before she took them
and what her eyes have done to the ones in my head
makes films and papers and chemicals
seem more important than they ever should be.
These are problems of optics and
the ways light will bend when introduced to liquid, rampant,
inside our heads.

In a photo album,
they are flat and will not rise to meet
the profile drawing near,
the conscious quest for detail.
Often, they are black and/or white
But more, a skillful melding of the two.
We will turn those pages slowly. Together.

Back lit and hungry,
a halo of halogen corona and, curious,
the one (or is it my?)
arm strikes shadow sharp and clear.
These are records, I must always remind myself,
but of what remains delusional and
how is it possible for these documents
to record the sound
of one other woman's shoes
as they strike the paving stones
that are displayed in the rain
on the way
to the door
which I am opening
because I remember
what it sounds like
when she taps the wire-bound glass
that cuts into the wood
and lets us see each other?

Ikonography

One time we went to the river
to play with guns and
I have a photograph now
of her

She is barefoot here
on a sparkley flat part
Her dress is unbuttoned
and hitched up around her waist
The pistol is level and she has one eye closed

Here is also
a paper target
I saved I think that is
pretty good shooting

This is us
and I can see her right away
but what was me
is very hard to recognize

We were on our way back east, which shows,
and resting on her friend Jackie's porch
Simone has good color and shows her fine leg
to outline my sulleness

My sister's wedding was so funny
and here's a picture of it:

Simone is laughing
which was always something to see
My smallest cousin is hugging her knees
They became a blur of
white clothing and obscure familial relationships
Somebody wrote it all down on the back
and it says "R. w/girlfriend & Shawna (age 4), 1983"

Though I once had many hundreds of photographs of her
I have lost them mostly not wanting
to see Simone as a picture
or
a place to hang upon
but so more important to remember the way
she sat bold on a white tub's edge
to wash thick blood from her thighs

These Are Photographs

These are photographs, spread wing-like across this table,
and they sideways cut the membraned layers beneath my eyelids,
the slick part that slides across the part they call "hazel."
A twenty-sided construct rolls nearly as well as a sphere
and each side is a photograph
and when it stops rolling nineteen of them will not be facing up.
These clever arrangements of salts and metals
add together quickly, like an equation,
but can never solve, are never totaled;
the palm of this hand and the way it rests against that shoulder
remain so while other, clearer photographs develop.
This blur here implies motion.

Icosahedron

He sees them for what they are,
these photographs, though still they can resemble
a shape like a wing when spread across this table,
and they sideways cut the membraned layers beneath his eyelids,
the slick part that slides across the part called "hazel."

A twenty-sided construct,
a thing that nearly looks like a sphere,
rolls almost as well as a sphere,
and each side is a photograph
and, even though there are twenty of them,
when it does stop rolling nineteen of them won't be facing up at him,
and sometimes he'll be up all night,
sometimes he'll bat it across the floor all night
just to hear the crackling noise it makes
when it's clear on the other side of the room.

These clever arrangements of salts and metals
add together quickly, like equations are supposed to do in books,
but can never solve, are never totaled;
the palm of this hand and the way it rests against that shoulder
remain so while other, clearer photographs develop.
The blur here in this corner, he will assume it implies motion.