Photograph

Where was I then,
or better yet, who?
All night long
I listen
to the edges
of old photographs
brushing against
the delicate contours
of memory,
and thank god
for windows
and doors.

#30 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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In Her Solitude

Chafing,
with matted scales
of light,
became the cinematic measures
by which her solitude
was visaged
and defined.
#29 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Dim

There is a tiredness
which sleep cannot cure;
there is a life,
undimmed,
surging unprotected
beyond these walls.

#28 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Stalking

To become a vagrant
to the territory
of one’s own self,
requires the right kind of corridor,
an elliptical sense of fugue,
and footfalls which softly echo
a stalker’s unmitigated pursuit.

#27-B from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Moonshine

It had been
a night to forget,
many were.
She blamed
the moon,
because it was there,
a mocking bauble
belonging to someone else’s idea
of munificent and festive.
The scraping
at the back of her brain
would stop any second now
any second
and give way
to a tented settling
and fade.

#27 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Deposed

It was a wrong turn,
modeling a cobbled geography
of hell,
that led her down
and away
from the sorceress she had been
once upon a time
in someone else’s kingdom
of rape and vampires.

#26 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Travel Plans

Had she done the right thing?

And by right thing

what or whose standards

was she applying

to measure the moral correctness

or lack thereof

of what she had done?

She had grown sick

and tired of considering

every angle and X-factor,

sick and tired

of a brain

hellbent on sabotage.

Self-forgiveness,

as a conceivable balm,

seemed faraway

and unreal,

but she would travel

whatever vagaries of distance

kept at bay

who she was,

from who she was

determined to become.

#25 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Reel

No matter
how many times
she played it
over
and over
in her mind
she couldn’t
for the life of her
digest the magnitude
of what had been taken
and why.

#24 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman

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Butter and Arson

Perhaps,

in a hundred years,

none of this would matter—

the man across the street

would just be a man

and not her husband

holding hands

with that bitch

from 5-C

who had the nerve

to knock on their door

and ask if she could

borrow some butter

she was baking a cake

and was all out—

perhaps, in a hundred years,

bitches that borrow butter

and husbands

will have become

a thing of the past,

but right now,

she had a household to run,

a husband to confront,

and of course the flagrant itch

to burn it all down to the ground,

before picking up the kids.

#23 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Steppingstone

She had played dress-up

to echo the life without—

At twilight, she’d shed.

#22 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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