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
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 Quarterly, Drunken Boat, EOAGH, New American Writing, New 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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