DEUS EX MACHINA / Daguerre
Daguerre, once sprawled on his chaise, rises to approach the shuttered window.
Brush dipped in silver made the world
Chorus: Pressed for time
He quickly opens and shuts the shades; /flash/ Rachel’s face.
for what’s a world without before and after
Mercury behind glass created your face
Chorus: Nick of time
Quickly opens and shuts; /flash/ Rachel’s face.
quandary of the fixed and dwell
Your face a glint in aggregate world
Chorus: Out of time
/flash/ Rachel’s face.
So open shutters for a spell
DEUS EX MACHINA / Daguerre
Daguerre walks across the dim persian toward a pile of diorama sketches. He lifts them, drops them. They scatter the atelier floor.
If a city can be made in a matchbox
with small sticks and perspective/prospective smoke
If a city can be made in a breadbox
with time’s curvature, dayrise & nightshadow
If a city can be made without scale―
You see cobbles you cannot feel
If a city can be made to rain to puddle
And this city absorbed/observed like a pill
The city’s not the same―
The potted plants go dry
Kettle left on the flame
Streetlamps flutter lost catalogs down hintalleyways
When a city has been made.
Jennifer Pilch is the author of Deus Ex Machina (Kelsey Street Press, forthcoming 2015) and recent poems can be found or are soon forthcoming in Berkeley Poetry Review, Dreginald, Dusie, Fence, Pith, Summer Stock, Tarpaulin Sky Magazine, and TYPO. She edits La Vague Journal: http://www.lavaguejournal.com.
