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  • My Father's Leica
  • Ellen Sazzman (bio)

I dreamed he returned to retrieve his Leica,a more perfect camera never conceived than Leica.

Its sleek curves were my Polish-born mother's only rival.She merely mimicked the elegance achieved by the Leica.

He instructed us to sit still, "look natural" under flood lightswhile he peered in the viewfinder, studied the field of Leica.

He approached, hand reaching to touch our cheekswith the exposure meter, and set the shutter speed of Leica.

I held my breath. He focused the bayonet-mount lens,adjusted the aperture, and hit the release on the Leica.

My father shot our heads over and over againbut perfection could not be guaranteed by the Leica. [End Page 46]

My mother posed coquettishly until her slow fade.Her funeral, my grief, were observed by Leica.

When his hands shook too badly to hold steadyin the new millennium, he bequeathed me his Leica.

I was to keep it safe until he recovered. He didnot trust me to master the features of Leica.

Although he knew to compensate for its parallax error,he was sure my center would be deceived by Leica.

But I'd already been taught. I didn't need to learnthings are not what they seem from Leica.

True, I only use my single lens reflex,but I cradle his rangefinder; I believe in the Leica.

Its portraits never let me forget adolescence.Sometimes I want to inflict amnesia on Leica.

Would he have come closer if Ellen bore beauty?Would he have claimed her reconceived as Leica? [End Page 47]

Ellen Sazzman

Ellen Sazzman (ellensazz@gmail.com) is a writer, mother, and lawyer living in the Washington, D.C., area. Recently, she has been published in Innisfree, Poetica, and Bogg as well as in Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge (an anthology), the Legal Studies Forum, the Rockhurst Review, Potato Eyes, Soul Fountain, and the California Quarterly. She has also received honorable mentions in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg poetry contest sponsored by the Judah Magnes Museum, Berkeley, California. She finds increasing inspiration from the sometimes contradictory cultural and religious traditions of Judaism that her parents (neither of whom made it beyond eighth grade) held so dear.

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