ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Kat Neis is a freelance writer and creative consultant originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Lake Effect, Roanoke Review, Zone 3, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Equinox: Poetry & Prose, among others. Her writing has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the Dyer-Ives Foundation, and the College of Wooster. She is the co-founder of Siblíní Journal, a creative magazine for young luminaries.
Shrouds
Because I am not yet dead, my hands pour chemicals
in varying shades of violet and yellow over cold
spools of film, mirrors of metal. To begin, I must always
stand in the lightless closets, reach into nothing
to grip a wheel and wind the negatives, clicking, clicking.
Listen, says my teacher, you will hear if it is wound correctly.
Only I can never hear it. Instead, in the coffins of those closets,
the darkness spins, spins, a shadowbox of images not yet seen
by anyone ticking past. Drenched into something,
I think perhaps I might see my grandfather, his sepia-toned
face, his hands clutching a paintbrush. In my childhood
Michigan, our walls were littered with his paintings —
a lakeside beach, a basset Hound — slick oils on textured
canvas. And here, in the darkroom, I wish
to let him return to me, let the metal wheels lock him
back into time, the chemical baths brimming
with acids biting at flesh beneath fingernail. My hands
drip dry with strange purples. My teacher begins
to play Ella Fitzgerald on the speaker and I feel as though
I could raise anyone from the dead. Nothing lost for good,
I could call any name and watch their soul appear, murky
and dim, the next pale visage emergent on white paper.
When I first began tinkering with the opening line of this poem, I was in college, deeply immersed in a photography class, and spending many late nights alone in the darkroom working on assignments. In the darkness, alone with my many selves, I often thought of family and friends, of those aging or dead, of those I had lost touch with somehow. The darkroom in those months seemed an almost mythical space, and alone with the film and the dim light, I did feel as though there was something magical to the process, of how the images would appear almost miraculously. Sometime during the course of that class, I started a poem entitled "My dead grandfather returns to me in the photography studio," which eventually became this poem as it exists today.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
