Wednesday, April 10, 2013

a poem by michael tod edgerton




Autobiopic. Echo of Bovary at the window

dark screen

slow exhalation of bow over string over faint rain          drawn out                           fades

a stalking asceticism hovers in the window

sealed                          steel-eyed

pan up                                                                    strings march
black
black         
black         

white

breaks             over         
a shoulder          a hand          the blinds

pin back soft light escapes the edges

hovers in the window               the hand

spreads the blind     glare opens voluminous


white across the screen

















dims to black and white streaking over ice blue feeding itself into the receding horizon —
the ground elongating along the vanishing
line of sight panning out

seizure of solipsism or dissolution overtakes     the object                           affect                                                       
recedes with the effect

enter the frame from below and receding slo-mo from focus                                                summer
                                                                                                                                      maples
turn
bright
wheel
ringing
 turn
 greening
turn 
gold
  cars
splashing

wet
road

  umbrellas
and                        ponchos                                     along the walk:
shirtless
runners




shifting scale
in the frame
camera at the window
lens retracting
       the whole scene
set on wheels and rolling back recedes shrinking

out of focus           dog-walkers          children running past           whole buildings

glide into frame and away          one scene after another           exit frame right exit the

horizon
 with sky
and ground
as if distending
infinitely and from
the gap
the hand
spreads
   the louvered
blind
 difference of                                         
        gaze and the whole

undefined

interior 

space

the outside

     sharp-zipped bass





presses


from several points white erodes the screen

















dims on a waterside park scene. camera still

brown-haired curly young man
crosses the grass
rocks
unpaved path
shoeless
shirtless
hairless
nipples
shoulders
shorts
no belt
his back
sliding
softly into
his hips where
the waist
above his shorts
wrests
attention

the subject
object
effect                    event                                                                                                      
advent of the whole all                                             
the while
casting a line


and another and a                                             
net as if to cast
not ex- not in-
not teriority
not territory—no

                                                               sources                                     surges

                                                                             glare off his eye of the water


                                                                                                              fills the screen


















through the white, stairs
moving swiftly up
                                  stair     >     stair     >     stair     >     stair     >     stair     >     stair     >     door

swings open  
draft sounds        forward to center           stops       window

                                    shutters flung open                        sharp intake of air a

hovering

                                                                                      apprehension       
                                                                                               empties the room

                          wall                            ceiling                                                     vertiginous pan

    floor                           wall

camera on its side on the oak slats            

letter in the dust of the attic

glint from the corner in the side of the frame

slow zoom through three dissolves — frame over frame along the floor:

silver signet: Amor nel Cor ringing the note



invented to make one despair of all desire

unstable particular                       touch
how does it feel                it  is it
touch
 inside                it is it                              undone

exaggerated by art
how (do you
tell                                                                             a lie
with your mouth
so full or
 without it
how) “to find out exactly what was meant in life                                                                               
by what (threshold                 the words           

(thewords) had
seeme  ed so beautifful to her in books

“p a s s i o n”

“b  li ss ”

    since the happiness she should have

sinsince the happi mess

the hapness es

which should halve she

should have hadhad not come to her
“rr   ap apertu r aptre”
 
had notnot come
since the happiness which coming had
the happiness she should have hap
    hap had        (blis iss lipsis is       )

theewworrds( ha v

   wordsurge

       halve bbroke ope
w i e                                                     w ite

                 wh de                                                                      glare                                  ope in








from the book Vitreous Hide




Michael Tod Edgerton is the author of Vitreous Hide (Lavender Ink 2013). His poems have appeared as the contest winner of the Boston Review and Five Fingers Review poetry contests, and in Denver QuarterlyDrunken BoatEOAGHNew American WritingNew Orleans Review and Word For/Word, among other journals. He holds an MFA from the Program in Literary Arts at Brown University and is an associate editor with Tarpaulin Sky. A native of Lexington, KY, Tod currently lives in Atlanta with his partner, Greg, and their antisocial cat, Penelope. Information about ordering Vitreous Hide from the publisher, future reading dates, and about Tod’s ongoing participatory project, “what most vividly (a choral work),” can all be found on his website, MichaelTodEdgerton.blogspot.com.



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