|| 'B' (If I should have a daughter) || Hiroshima || Hands || Postcards || Extended Development || Montauk || Forest Fires || Dreaming Boy ||
|| The Type || Beginning, Middle and End || Repetition || Teeth || An Origin Story || When Love Arrives ||
|| The Type || Beginning, Middle and End || Repetition || Teeth || An Origin Story || When Love Arrives ||
The link to the video of Sarah performing this poem can be found here.
It didn’t always work this way.
There was a time you had to get your hands dirty,
when you were in the dark for most of it. Fumbling was a given.
When you needed more contrast, more saturation-
darker darks and brighter brights-
they called it extended development.
It meant you spent longer time up to your wrists, longer time inhaling chemicals.
It wasn’t always easy.
Grandpa Steward was a Navy photographer.
Young, red-faced, with his sleeves rolled up.
Fists of fingers like fat rolls of coins, in photographers he looked like Popeye the Sailor Man come to life.
Crooked smile, tuft of chest hair, he showed up to World War II with a smirk and a hobby.
They asked him if he had much experience with photography, and he lied.
He learned to read Europe upside down from the heights of a fighter plane.
Camera snapping, eyelids flapping, he learned war like it was a map, thought he could read his way home.
When other mean returned, they put their weapons out to rust,
but he carried the lenses and the cameras home with him.
Opened a shop. Turned it into a family affair.
My father was born into a world of black and white.
His basketball hands learned the tiny clicks and slides
of lens into frame, film into camera, chemicals into plastic bins.
His father knew the equipment, but not the art
he knew the dark, but not the brights.
My father learned the magic. Spent his time following light.
Once he flew halfway across the country to follow a forest fire.
Hunted it with his camera. Following the light, he said. Follow the light.
There are parts of me I only recognize from photographs.
The loft in Soho, on Wooster Street, with the creaky hallways and
twelve-foot ceilings, the white walls and cold floors.
This was my mother’s home. Before she was mother.
Before she was wife. She was artist.
The only two rooms in the house with walls that reached up
to the ceilings and doors that could open and close were
the bathroom and the darkroom. The darkroom she made herself.
With custom-made stainless steel sinks
for washing prints, washing film.
A 8x10 bed enlarger that moved up and down by a giant hand-crank.
A bank of colour-balanced lights, a white glass wall for viewing prints,
a hand-made drying rack that folded in and out from the wall.
My mother built herself a darkroom. Made it her home.
Fell in love with a man with basketball hands,
with the way he looked at light.
They got married, had a baby, moved to a house near a park.
But they kept the loft on Wooster Street for birthday parties and treasure hunts.
The baby tipped the greyscale.
Filled her parents’ photo albums with red balloons and yellow icing.
The baby grew into a girl without freckles. With a crooked smile.
She doesn’t understand why her friends did not have darkrooms in their houses.
She never saw her parents kiss and she never saw them hold hands.
But one day another baby showed up-
this one with perfect straight hair and bubblegum cheeks,
and they named him Sweet Potato, and he laughed so loudly,
he sacred the pigeons on the fire escape.
The four of them lived in the house near the park:
the Girl Without Freckles, the Sweet Potato Boy,
the Basketball Father, and Darkroom Mother,
and they lit their candles and said their prayers
and the corners of the photographs curled.
One day some towers fell.
And the house near the park became a house under ash,
so they escaped in backpacks, on bicycles, to darkrooms.
But the loft on Wooster Street was built for an artist,
not a family of pigeons. And the walls that do not reach the ceiling do not hold in the yelling.
So the man with the basketball hands put his weapons out to rust.
He could not go to war, and no maps pointed home.
His hands did not fit his wife’s, did not fit the camera, did not fit his body.
The Sweet Potato Boy mashed his fists into his mouth
until he had nothing more to say, and the Girl Without Freckles
went treasure-hunting on her own
And on Wooster Street, in Soho, in the building with the
creaky hallways, in the loft with the white walls, in the darkroom
with too many sinks, underneath the color-balanced lights,
she found a note tacked to the wall with a thumbtack,
left over from a time before towers. From a time before babies.
And the note said, A guy sure loves a girl who works in the darkroom.
It took a year for my father to pick up a camera again.
His first time out, he followed the Christmas lights
dotting their way through New York City’s trees-
little flashes winking at him from out of the darkest darks.
A few years later, he flew across the country to follow a forest fire. It was ravaging the west coast, eating eighteen-wheeler trucks in its stride. He stayed for a week, hunting it with his camera.
On the other side of the country, I went to class and wrote a poem in the margins of my notebook.
We have both learned the art of capture.
Maybe, we are learning the art of embracing.
Maybe, we are learning the art of letting go.
There was a time you had to get your hands dirty,
when you were in the dark for most of it. Fumbling was a given.
When you needed more contrast, more saturation-
darker darks and brighter brights-
they called it extended development.
It meant you spent longer time up to your wrists, longer time inhaling chemicals.
It wasn’t always easy.
Grandpa Steward was a Navy photographer.
Young, red-faced, with his sleeves rolled up.
Fists of fingers like fat rolls of coins, in photographers he looked like Popeye the Sailor Man come to life.
Crooked smile, tuft of chest hair, he showed up to World War II with a smirk and a hobby.
They asked him if he had much experience with photography, and he lied.
He learned to read Europe upside down from the heights of a fighter plane.
Camera snapping, eyelids flapping, he learned war like it was a map, thought he could read his way home.
When other mean returned, they put their weapons out to rust,
but he carried the lenses and the cameras home with him.
Opened a shop. Turned it into a family affair.
My father was born into a world of black and white.
His basketball hands learned the tiny clicks and slides
of lens into frame, film into camera, chemicals into plastic bins.
His father knew the equipment, but not the art
he knew the dark, but not the brights.
My father learned the magic. Spent his time following light.
Once he flew halfway across the country to follow a forest fire.
Hunted it with his camera. Following the light, he said. Follow the light.
There are parts of me I only recognize from photographs.
The loft in Soho, on Wooster Street, with the creaky hallways and
twelve-foot ceilings, the white walls and cold floors.
This was my mother’s home. Before she was mother.
Before she was wife. She was artist.
The only two rooms in the house with walls that reached up
to the ceilings and doors that could open and close were
the bathroom and the darkroom. The darkroom she made herself.
With custom-made stainless steel sinks
for washing prints, washing film.
A 8x10 bed enlarger that moved up and down by a giant hand-crank.
A bank of colour-balanced lights, a white glass wall for viewing prints,
a hand-made drying rack that folded in and out from the wall.
My mother built herself a darkroom. Made it her home.
Fell in love with a man with basketball hands,
with the way he looked at light.
They got married, had a baby, moved to a house near a park.
But they kept the loft on Wooster Street for birthday parties and treasure hunts.
The baby tipped the greyscale.
Filled her parents’ photo albums with red balloons and yellow icing.
The baby grew into a girl without freckles. With a crooked smile.
She doesn’t understand why her friends did not have darkrooms in their houses.
She never saw her parents kiss and she never saw them hold hands.
But one day another baby showed up-
this one with perfect straight hair and bubblegum cheeks,
and they named him Sweet Potato, and he laughed so loudly,
he sacred the pigeons on the fire escape.
The four of them lived in the house near the park:
the Girl Without Freckles, the Sweet Potato Boy,
the Basketball Father, and Darkroom Mother,
and they lit their candles and said their prayers
and the corners of the photographs curled.
One day some towers fell.
And the house near the park became a house under ash,
so they escaped in backpacks, on bicycles, to darkrooms.
But the loft on Wooster Street was built for an artist,
not a family of pigeons. And the walls that do not reach the ceiling do not hold in the yelling.
So the man with the basketball hands put his weapons out to rust.
He could not go to war, and no maps pointed home.
His hands did not fit his wife’s, did not fit the camera, did not fit his body.
The Sweet Potato Boy mashed his fists into his mouth
until he had nothing more to say, and the Girl Without Freckles
went treasure-hunting on her own
And on Wooster Street, in Soho, in the building with the
creaky hallways, in the loft with the white walls, in the darkroom
with too many sinks, underneath the color-balanced lights,
she found a note tacked to the wall with a thumbtack,
left over from a time before towers. From a time before babies.
And the note said, A guy sure loves a girl who works in the darkroom.
It took a year for my father to pick up a camera again.
His first time out, he followed the Christmas lights
dotting their way through New York City’s trees-
little flashes winking at him from out of the darkest darks.
A few years later, he flew across the country to follow a forest fire. It was ravaging the west coast, eating eighteen-wheeler trucks in its stride. He stayed for a week, hunting it with his camera.
On the other side of the country, I went to class and wrote a poem in the margins of my notebook.
We have both learned the art of capture.
Maybe, we are learning the art of embracing.
Maybe, we are learning the art of letting go.
|| B' (If I should have a daughter) || Hiroshima || Hands || Postcards || Extended Development || Montauk || Forest Fires || Dreaming Boy ||
|| Beginning, Middle and End || Repetition || Teeth || An Origin Story || When Love Arrives ||
|| Beginning, Middle and End || Repetition || Teeth || An Origin Story || When Love Arrives ||