The Sun Also Rises

As the water

softened the earth

in the garden,

she peered out

from under her sunhat

to gauge

if that dark thing

coiled by the fence

was a snake,

and if so, by god,

could it be smiling?

#47 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Water Baby

As a child,
they had tried to scare her
with stories of Jaws,
and other undersea dangers.
Her mother wanted her to be safe,
which meant keeping her as close to shore
as possible.
Now, out there, alone, bobbing,
she clearly understood
just how vast and unforgiving a mother
the sea was, or could be,
and how, by radical turn,
she had become the water baby,
unafraid to submerge. 

#46 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Breathing Lessons

Goggles
refract light
was the first lesson
she learned.
How to breathe
underwater
with no apparatus
was the second
which enabled
a lucid
surrogate life
below the surface.

#45 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman

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Transience

She never did go anywhere,
you know?
Some ghosts
become totemic stand-bys
for the lives they never lived,
for potentialties
that passed, in solemn wisp,
from dream to dream,
then fade.

#44 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman

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Endangered

All the maidens

had gone extinct.

The debutantes too.

She found herself

in this place, alone,

a Bardo stage set

for a film

that would never be made

about women

who scorched revolution

into the earth

while kneading forgiveness,

for themselves, and the men,

who skirted the borders

of psychic endangerment.

#43 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Faith

She believed

there was a place for her,

 a venerated quarry,

or wedge of corner,

somewhere

that wouldn’t be

overlooked

by the gossamer sentience

of light falling.

#42 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Pin-Up

Cased

in lucid glare

she modeled herself

as a pin-up

sacrifice

to the ribbed shadows

that dyed

her silence.

#41 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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If Only

She turned, obliquely,

to reframe her perspective—

Maybe one last chance?

#40 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Daisy-Chain

Everything dissolved anyway,
was how she consoled herself.
She would do something,
she would plant yellow daisies
in the garden
first thing tomorrow morning,
yellow seemed appropriate, yes,
even though the idea
of morning
seemed far-off
and left her feeling
somewhat queasy.

#39 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Plot Twist

As if in a dream,

or mottled gloam,

she found herself bailing

on the small needy child

with grotesquely long

tapered fingers–

she found herself leaving home

to an unmarked plot

and its numberless ghosts.

#38 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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