Flash Photography
He appears in a photograph of his life
there are no faces, nor anyone
who lived in a memory.
Images develop.
That long table was a smorgasbord
where he left only bones and crumbs.
There is a mirror on a transparent wall
behind it old men listen to lounge music
as they play cards.
The gamblers have his personal details
written on the same pocket notebooks
they keep score on.
Under the beer stained carpet
is an underlay of his history
he has seen the foot traffic come and go
his prints are everywhere.
He takes pictures, needing not to look at them
they were after all, all the same
just different venues, furnishings, landscapes.
Cigarette butts stuck into sand buckets,
line the walls of a diffuse composition
the place reeks of long nights
inside a nicotinic mind.
He photographs the cholinergic receptors
of his autonomic ganglia.
The exit is that way,
the door next to the empty fire extinguisher.
When he goes out
the fresh cold air burns all the negatives
in a Box Brownie.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2022
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