I chose coming away because here at least I feel good — and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside — and very still — Maybe you will not love me for it — but for me it seems to be the best thing I can do for you…
Today it rains — Georgia O'Keefe, letter to Alfred Stieglitz after two months in Taos, July 9, 1929
Tomorrow, when I pour the hot water
into the coffee press, I'll watch the black grounds
do their slow dance, mixing bitter heat
with the promise of something smooth.
I'll remember you; how you took out your camera
led me to your bed
and sat in the chair across the room,
your voice guiding my fingers, one
button, then another. The revelation
of skin: a white bird, a clean slate,
the air of a quick rain
at the end of a long summer.
With your lens
between us, we could both be
beautiful, could take each other in
the way my eyes do when I rise
early to see sun climb over canyon.
Don't you understand? I had to leave
to find a way back
to the man in the chair, the woman
you photographed.
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I'm working on a series of persona poems written in the voices of O'Keefe & Stieglitz. I'm intrigued by the fact that though the two were artists, they couldn't escape the same troubles & griefs that mount & plague every and any union that lasts beyond the honeymoon phase.
I like the tone, the voice. *
Stunning *
What Emily said. ***
Blew me hot and cold and hot again. ***