Take a glass plate and clean it well In the light, fill the center with collodion Tilt until it reaches each corner Pour the excess back in the bottle
Your darlings are poison – candy cigarette daughter another hung from a tree son waist deep in rising water – they float in mercury time
Take the plate into a dark place Immerse in silver nitrate Dry off the backside and load it into a dark slide Place into the camera and expose
In the back of your truck hands become stained, toxic outside is Antietam night where collodion once held wounds ground exhales the centuries the moon turns silver to blood
Develop using a ferrous sulfate Fix the plate with potassium cyanide
Decomposing body eye socket and earth merge skin a leather handbag jawbone and cheek dust pillow for the dead head in brutal Knoxville heat
Time is essential in wet-plate photography Move quickly to a portable darkroom Rinse the plate in fresh water then dry Varnish with sandarac, alcohol and lavender oil
And the children again, older freckled lunar landscapes postmortem stillness the boy’s eyes fixed and dilated three perfect funeral masks
Note that a blue sky and clouds are impossible to render Expect imperfections and subtle debris