Brady's Ghosts (revised)

After the war, Matthew Brady found the thirst
for grey lads in the poses of the dead
dried up. He returns to portarture –
but who wants their stiff face pressed
through a lens that has seen ghosts? Eventually,
the bankruptors take everything.

The stacked glass negatives – the posed and formal
dead, the real dead in their undone rapture –
are sold to glaziers. Not suitable for windows,
of course, but greenhouses – the boys of Anteitam
loose their shadows over drifts of ferns and orchids.

________________

I've been reading Sonnets. Does it show?

3 Comments

Pat said:

I love this poem. I loved the earlier versions, too. Is it possible this one is too tight?

PS—typo in line 3. Still love it!—P

Res said:

Looks like the aftermath of a certain “TGTBAPIHS” Z assignment. Am I right?

Erin said:

Yes, Res, almost always…

Translation for the unintiated:

This poem originated in a “There’s got to be a poem in this somewhere” challenge on Zeugma.

Random Updates was the previous entry in this blog.

Westmost Anthropology is the next entry in this blog.

Powered by Movable Type 4.01-rc2