Friday, January 28
PHOTO OP AT ANTELOPE CANYON
Where light passes through Where light is most mercurial Where light flees the ingress of deeper water Where light works best on an iPhone, vivid warm Where light, a certain slant of hibernal Light, oppresses Where light praises the canyon of water-whipped stone Where light fails to detect the mercury in nearby water Where light leadens in my arms, a crowd forming Where light, poisoned, rasps of the mercury in the water Where light paints the evening wall & I take an expected photograph Where light probes my polluted skin Where light harbingers a kiss or cancer Where light illumes the days of the dictator, actor, & poet Where light or night triumphs Where lighght Where light boasts an illustrious vocabulary Where light brightens the graves of those righteous Where light flees from the mercury in the water Where light comes to coax color from my eyes Where light is a technology that allows looking to control looking What light shows me & I look away Where the light of God is the same light that allowed mercury in the water Where light, what light is liable —is light liable for mercury, the water? Before the light flees I take a photograph, cluck, what a shame, all that mercury in the water. (Sarah Ghazal Ali)