Double Exposure

I. 

 

He was caught in the still smiles of my seventh birthday. 

My lover of two years, still developing an understanding—

 

Of the girl with the thick pink jagged lines where teeth

Would take their place. Reflected in the white candles 

 

Pushed into the cake cream. He left a whorl of unique

Prints on the picture pane. Smoothing my once black

 

Short and ribboned braids. Worn in the Indian-style 

Of all my honorary grandmothers in Bangalore. 

 

He had brought into bed another photograph, a Polaroid. 

The single one of my diabetic Mother’s mother, tucked-in, 

 

Blind from “the sugar” disease. Boxes of wedding sweets 

Hidden by her boxes of glass bangles under the sheets. 

 

Mashing date slurry and whips of cocoanut flakes 

In those cool plum gums in the big lips I inherited. 

 

She had seen the partition, blood, flashes of heat 

From the fires, the riots, and programs on the TV. 

 

"I can see it in her eyes." 

Holding the oily square next to my oval face. 

 

I asked him later if he had any good pictures from his childhood. 

He repeated "good pictures" reading Roland Barthes on my breasts, 

 

Taking his time to recall those images of images. 

"Oh, all of them came out differently than expected.”  

 

"My Mother was terrible at using the camera.” 

He whispered touching the skin on my eyelids. 

 

Over and over in circles like an old telephone dial. 

Or, when we were kids, rewinding a videocassette. 

 

 

II. 

 

There he was. 

A small sphere

of green. Sitting

cross-legged, and 

inhaling sweet moss 

and mud in the punctured 

tarp pitched in the mouth 

of a cold mountain morning. 

On a mission to break 

the earth, uncover calcite shells.  

He has always known 

a Wasatch morning was made

from the mystic something

buried in the bones of 

the ancient benthic.

 

I imagine his mother crouching 

on her once young tan legs. 

Fanning her hands,

like dispersing campfire smoke, 

to get him in the center 

and into focus. 

 

"Look closer," 

 

Observing him from the pine 

with covered breath, 

distant and flexed, was a 

pit-olive black bear. 

 

The animal’s eyes beamed 

the white of spider beads. 

Two iris delicate pistons 

between muscular wet snout. 

 

"He was shot—

 

We just didn't know it then."