Hold the photograph
where her marble eyes
cut off the chinoiserie tea pot just
and force me to take this from you
This cellular gold stamp between a chance
and nothing
Her nose casting a shadow
in the darkroom’s catalog
because this is the only way
I can know her;
Through her ruin’s ministry,
the tempo’s dictate
dead as a phone line
in one moving picture’s end
Where she waits near the slab
as a sick cat pawing the cord’s
end as a moon garland.