PoetryAloud

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Collin Kelley Reads

                 Render
                          --for Sally Mann

            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

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