Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century

The Photographer

SHANNON BRAMER The Photographer What it means to carry a camera is to speak out of the empty frame seeing God, Sky, Road, her return and faith in the perfection of deserts. To picture the quiet man’s body in the city. This is what it means to love, to loiter In forbidden zones, allowing the girl to loiter there with you, perhaps, taking your camera away at intervals and sending you into the city alone. Sometimes we need to come home empty handed; sick with strange deserts in mind we will leave and return With our long memory of the city, its sights and sounds to repeat and return to the missing man in the room, his empty chair. In his cool bed we loiter in the dark, patient with the camera and every sense recalling other deserts, Other times like this when the idea of deserts confounded us, when we dreamt the city was made of sand, tugged that camera down around his neck, no promise of return, but something of you, hopeful, seemed to loiter in the mind of the street, the empty Bed to go back to, your empty room a perfect void like his deserts, the window open where you loiter like a vagrant in your own apartment, the city loose with lights, the slow lights of return. You see he is unpacking the camera, Cradling the camera, testing the empty weight of its images, tiny doors of return, her cold pictures of city, moon, desert. UNCONVENTIONAL SESTINAS ...