Emily Lawson
Darkroom
Skull: beginning, in spurts, to be exposed
in the black bath, a night-blooming
flower. So silver gelatin swells, so the stain
develops. Why shoot this creature’s head,
its sun-bleached horns? Or snap the child
watching a cardinal from her lean-to
of lashed boughs? I watched you like that,
wanting. You’d say “capture” a moment.
So, your last captives: cow skull, redbird—
then, in the living room—me, with my
needlework and face turned away. Glare
floods out the window’s image. I shudder.
Child no longer. Cardinal, no longer. And
nowhere here, my eyes; nowhere yours.
in the black bath, a night-blooming
flower. So silver gelatin swells, so the stain
develops. Why shoot this creature’s head,
its sun-bleached horns? Or snap the child
watching a cardinal from her lean-to
of lashed boughs? I watched you like that,
wanting. You’d say “capture” a moment.
So, your last captives: cow skull, redbird—
then, in the living room—me, with my
needlework and face turned away. Glare
floods out the window’s image. I shudder.
Child no longer. Cardinal, no longer. And
nowhere here, my eyes; nowhere yours.
Emily Lawson is currently a Poe/Faulkner Fellow in the University of Virginia’s MFA program, where she also teaches poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM and Split Rock Review.
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