WHERE
WE RELIED TOO MUCH ON OPTICS
Lens turned on lens,
I took a photo of the photographer
but failed to fulfill our hope
of recursion—in the print, my weak outline
described in the circle of her glass only fell into the dark
stuff of emulsion, my figure indefinite
where a perfect image would have shown
her reflected in my lens, then me
again, & her again, & again so—
but we made no mise
en abyme, just a portrait of a woman
clutching her camera to her eye
so that it obscures her features
&, reproduced just once, confuses
what might have been true.
Lens turned on lens,
I took a photo of the photographer
but failed to fulfill our hope
of recursion—in the print, my weak outline
described in the circle of her glass only fell into the dark
stuff of emulsion, my figure indefinite
where a perfect image would have shown
her reflected in my lens, then me
again, & her again, & again so—
but we made no mise
en abyme, just a portrait of a woman
clutching her camera to her eye
so that it obscures her features
&, reproduced just once, confuses
what might have been true.
Jeremy Allan Hawkins was born in New York and currently teaches in
France. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Harvard Review, Tin House, and Salamander,
among others. He used to carry a camera everywhere.