Issue 129

But a landscape
is only itself. Our grief
consists in this, and our hopeless joy.

I lift up my eyes. The sky
is layered with pinks and reds,

an octave of shades, like drawn
blood set aside in a glass tube.

As near to forever
as humans can bear to imagine

our earth’s one moon will circle,
and far-off stars although unstoried

shine

But lookers do something important: They reveal the constructedness of the endeavor of photography itself.

When I am deeper into this process, the patterns begin to develop, and I can sense a power of realization or truth, like looking up at the stars and knowing you are nothing and everything all at once.

A little angel stepped out of a scrub oak
and tried to bar my way—

Blue is an elegy for the sea.

Make her domestic as a rose,
polite as tap water, safe as the corpus
on a dime-store crucifix.

Clothes wilted on our bodies. The old habit
of flesh returned.