Gelatin silver print, Hal Fischer, 1977
I swear, this filthy light could pass clean
through me. My body—stretched & strung
across a wooden cross. Counterfeit
Christ, corset abandoned in the corner.
There’s a precision to the intimacy
of this ritual; strangers’ vicarious
hunger for gentle violence; being made
a spectacle in a room filled up with spectacle.
It takes a measure of restraint. A precise
velocity & angle to make wood or leather
into thunder. Snap & paint a red horizon
on my spine, my ass, my chest, or thighs.
Mark skin the tint of stolen pomegranates
split against cement, then faded to the shade
of winter figs. A broken still life—landscape
layered over landscape. The gathered bodies:
Dom & sub, whip & cross & crowd, create
a lexicon of their desires. Even the image
desires something—witness. When asked
why he took the pictures of bondage gear
without a body in the frame, Fischer said:
because it would have been too real.
Would have pushed too hard against
an invisible boundary. Even the empty
frame demands something—a body
to fill it. I fill it with a memory. My body
of hazy lines & thin glass longing
to shatter.
Originally published in Ninth Letter. Copyright © 2022 by torrin a. greathouse.