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CBC LITERARY AWARDS

First Prize
Poetry

MUYBRIDGE'S HORSE   (p. 2 of 3)

1   |   2   |   3   |   JUL '04

once, we’re at Woodward’s Gardens
Harry, Eadweard and I,
and the art gallery is filled with landscapes

Eadweard says it’s horrible, low class, the death of Vision
holds the pictures in his squints

Harry sidles up to mountains
enters the oceanic blues of the Mediterranean,
a ship sailing across the salon
his lungs fill with prevailing winds
and he seats himself at scandalous luncheons, imposes on family portraits
transforms each scene into vaudeville

my choice, then:
the exact pivot of Eadweard’s lens
or Harry’s tectonic arms

Harry spins me by a finger,
past Mexicos, into royal European meadows
he rushes Paris nightlines past me and I’m laughing and can’t stop
and I’m laughing and the room goes dizzy and Eadweard’s gone for his camera in a black blur
and returns as I finally slow in front of a painting of pigeons by the California sea

Eadweard sets up his machine exactly,
hangs a shirt across its lens
removes the shield from a negative holder,
collodian dripping onto the carpet

in the gallery’s viewing chair, he pretends to sleep,
hat brim over his brow
shoulders slumped in feigned boredom
this will be the only time I remember him ever acting out a joke

as I approach the camera to expose the photograph
Harry comes in behind me
rustles my skirt, breathes slowly into my neck so I laugh again
hot mouth on my collarbone
we remove the shirt, briefly,
from the camera, then replace it,
Harry’s slow circling against me while Eadweard acts at dozing

with the plate exposed,
we detach our middles, reluctantly,
create a distance between bodies
Eadweard, emerging from his stale humour
as though our smiling were for him

when Harry and I navigate the midway, later
vendors mistake us for Mr. And Mrs.
our fingers whispering on brief accidents of light

back at the gallery,
Eadweard watches the squares of our backs
slowly swallowed by the Saturday afternoon crowd
he soaks the picture in some acidic concoction he keeps bottled in the dark
image clinging to the glass as he rinses it
waves fixing his sleep to permanence

he might have returned to the studio to compare his sleeping performance
with the salon
so he stood where we did,
holding his two versions of the scene

deciding which reality to trust

arriving at Vallejo

it’s thick midnight when the ferry docks
so Eadweard leaves the water relying on memory
finds edges and trusts them

at the dock, he catches the last train
rides breathing metal into landscape
then, steps from locomotion into darkness

he hires a carriage to climb the 10 miles & 1000 feet
up Mount St. Helena, to the Yellow Jacket Mine
where Larkyns is playing cards,
counting silver bars

the driver relies on his fingers for light
hold the reins, extending from his arm, an extra limb
- I know this country, he says, don’t worry
cart’s wheels released into the night’s liquid gravity

the stars are silver hints of sunlight
Eadweard rolls the barrel of his pistol with a thumb,
clicks its machinery inside his jacket,
fingering metal,
shutting its lens
handle fitting into his palm

he fills its emptiness with the calm perfection of bullets

asking about highway robbery, he expels one shot
orange explosion lighting rolling hills
arm, steady, remaining extended in the air
as he swallows the bullet’s retort with muscle

at the peak of the mountain, the house perched like a nest
the carriage takes its payment,
and slips behind geography
the windows of the mining cabin
paint yellow squares onto the earth
a party’s music ending where Eadweard stands,
framed
in the entranceway

man raising a pistol and firing³

the cabin’s soft fire
shatters triangles
over the hillside

Eadweard approaches the door
and a man opens the wooden hinge

he shrinks from its yellow
hand fingering his gold pocket watch
his language,
from the darker air
asking for Harry, please
saying his business will
only take a minute, just a minute, thanks.

Harry excuses himself from
a game of Hearts, weaves through bodies
poker faces,
whisky breath
bringing the cards along to the doorframe,
hair bouncing as he approaches colder air,
cigar clenched between teeth

he tilts his face out into the soupy stars
laughs,
exhaling brown smoke around Eadweard’s shoulders

Who is it, friend?
It’s so dark.I can’t see you.

Harry lifts a palm to his forehead,
cupping vision,
leans out of his light with
the queen of spades against his cheekbone

- Good evening, Major.

My name is Muybridge.

Here is the answer to the message you sent my wife.

in the Napa County jail cell

the window bars are loose
so Eadweard’s capture is a matter of choice

his hair goes completely white

fingering his quill’s calcium
he dips its tip into a pool of dark ink
circles the feather around his mouth, tasting dust

he scratches letters over the grains of hand-made papers
each small pellet of wood,
mountainous across the desert of the page
the hollow where his quill holds fast to its feather
used to be wings,
used to be a bloodline to the light heart of a gull

the letters he writes from this grey square
are heavy with this misdemeanour
bird’s blood looped into every capital

he takes his dinners in silence
removes silver covers from entrées with calculated effort,
placing them,
cautiously,
across dinner trays, over napkins
avoiding sound,
intentional
utensils joined only in the choreography of his teeth
patient grind of food a machinery he can trust

the slow decay of his body is a broken pulley

when he emerges, for court
he carries his quill,
hides forks in his pockets
holds his watch in a hand’s hollow,
relying on its gravity

three months of prison measured by the white whiskers that collapse from his mouth
like water
                           continued...

1 | 2 | 3 | JUL '04