Elaine. Abe Edgerton. Clay. With a shutter’s quick clickings, I stopped them, then dealt the divine and its opposite, picture by square picture: the unwinged body in flight—two hooves pushing off, then one, then none—and the pact of that flight: groping forelegs, the horn-sheathed toes thrust out like cane tips. Time after time, from the beauty of motion came the pickets of stasis! And yet, I remember the heart of a snapping turtle, grotesque in its florid two-step. We had peeled back the breastplate, dragged the body by cart past the eyes of twelve cameras, the cart wheels tripping the shutters. I could not watch the motion then, but turned instead to the open mouth, the palate ridged like a walnut shell, turned instead to the static photos—where something, hollow and weightless, a poppy perhaps, where something twelve times, like a poppy, was pressed and released by a rhythmic wind. I stopped the pine snake and horse. Or better, I held them. Field cat. Hawk. The wake of a coastline steamer.
What do You think about Flight: New And Selected Poems?
