Polaroids

A woman's bare white legs, Cut off just above the knee, The shine of her patent heels, the allure Of the unseen. A telephone-- The old-fashioned kind-- Dropped in from the top edge of the frame. It dangles, precariously, just above A curious pair of round-rimmed spectacles Resting on a glossy parquet floor. How else to capture The unlikely radiance of suns Refracted through a carnival vendor's lineup Of plastic goldfish baggies, A black boy's white eyeballs Popping from their dark sockets, The pockmarked barrel of his No. 2 pencil Forgotten on the desk, surrendered To a dusty afternoon somnolence. A Rottweiler in the bathtub, Two long-haired men in dark Suits, standing, in obvious discomfort, beside a potted plant With a flower like a phonograph. A girl in a purple veil. She ducks Her head as she walks, following The curvature of the scarred and Dirtied city wall (and from which war?) And tosses her matching handkerchief Backwards over her shoulder. One plain wooden chair stands upright In the center of a bare plank floor. Andy Warhol sneezes. Instantly, in perpetuity.