| cheap voyeurism
b&w mountains and a baby who is now older than i the dwarf & his cat in colour this time all frozen in time all frozen in kodacolour Oct 57 i have not yet born born & some family i'll never meet pose in front of a house whose number is 305 i wonder does it mean anything blurred photos clear photos stacks of people i'll never meet i name them & create adventures for them and wonder where are they the smiling crowd of school children who were born before i little jane jagen who signed the old yellowed valentine amid the envelopes negatives and cash receipts xmas trees on hardwood floors smiling strangers in suits cats and dogs long buried and mourned sit happily with their masters young as long as their photos remains bears shift through vacation garbage battleships now sunk sit in ports now closed why someone sold a hunk of their history escapes me but i worry would i be interested in these people if i knew them? in
sepia she looks more distinguished
the family
went to yellowstone
her pixie cut tossed aside the corners curled from age the cardboard frame falling to dust she smiles eternally at a photographer probably long dead her teeth pearly, eyes bright - a thousand miles from me she is dead now, i know and has no name there is nothing on the back to denote her identity i call her evinrude and chuckle she does too trapped in her smile for this is the one point in time where she will always be happy never feel pain trapped for an instant by the flash of a bulb and etched onto silver forever they fed the bears in the 50s you could do that they were burly bristly beasts not like yogi at all foraging in cans for scraps they decided hunting for food was for chumps free food abounded where there were two legs and if you ate one of them too, on the occasion, no one really was wiser were they? towering
over their boy,
i purchased
somebody's life in chromachrome
the parents proudly clutching their small son as he aged the story was the same- he did not grow while time took its toll and stooped his parents they remained taller than he perhaps he felt a bitter satisfaction when they finally took to their beds and he could look down lovingly at them, the way it should have been had nature not been so cruel or perhaps it was a blow, because the man was allowed to be a boy to his family until the bitterest of ends. for two mere quarters sepia toned woman i dub evinrude the proud dwarf in 40s clothing families vacations homes and cars parents niagara mount rushmore grey black & white even colour blurred & crisp in focus & not faded valentines ineligible letters but mainly pictures i live vicariously through stranger's photos after
the genetic twist of being born
stilted shortened he strove to live normal in a tall world joined the army (shoved missiles in metal cannons shot the commie koreans) went hunting with big guns bagged small animals (held aloft their once proud bodies) smiled on family outings (where cousins and nephews and nieces were quickly outgrowing him) looked back on his life and realized the true equalizing factor had always been the same (cold hard steel) |