 Edouard Etienne Levier, photographer unknown. (Australia) 1880s Edouard Etienne Levier Glazed eyes sunk under squid lids Cannot fit me, the watcher Keen to make curious sense, of you This gaudy pale dilettante Together we share a name along the line Alone in an empty room full of secrets No experience, nor custom, nor thought The same to recognize or cast on I persevere, squatting on my perch Hypnotised by the mystery of identity Peering hungrily close at an Other Tricked up in check like Sherlock The linguist who became, of all things A hatter and maybe even, so they say Before Melbourne, a gun runner Wrapped in velvet, I suspect Unnoticed like Rimbaud Worshipped at the ancestral shrine Are you idol, conscience, hero Mockingbird rival? I am swaying blind Were you thinking of me, as I of you? Waiting for a shot of recognition Blast of cognition, flash of intuition Until that revelatory moment When the model blinks back Everyone else freezes, you Remain as you knew you would be Deliberately mute and yet Did you wonder, who will remember? Who will gaze on your impassive face In the sorry future? Neither knows who the other might be Am I what you wished we might become? Nothing, I got nothing But I do know one thing about you Something you would never see In absentia you are tangibly present Unlike after you looked back at the lens Frozen ponce feet up in that soft chair Contrived amid brazen sangfroid Ed Southorn Ed Southorn is a Queensland writer interested in the anthropocene, social spatialization and cultural history. He was a newspaper reporter in Australia and England for 30 years. He has an MPhil in Creative Writing (non-fiction) and recently submitted a PhD in journalism and sociology. He teaches journalism and public writing at Griffith University and the University of Queensland. His most recent poems have been published in Meniscus and The Blue Nib.
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The Ekphrastic Review
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October 2021
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