Natasha Trethewey: Poet Laureate

 

February 1911

There are indeed all sorts of men

who visit here: those who want

nothing but to talk or hear the soft tones

of a woman's voice; others prefer

simply to gaze upon me, my face

turned from them as they touch

only themselves. And then there are those,

of course, whose desires I cannot commit

to paper

You ask me how I can do this —

In those moments I am again

a young girl, just past thirteen, seeing

for the first time, the luxurious curve

beneath my own breasts. So taken

with this view of myself, I sit too long

staring at my revlection in the bathwater,

the tin tub growing cold as I look

through myself to the gray bottom,

to nothing. Only my shivering

and the chattering of my teeth

jar me back, my skin gooseflesh,

the Braille text of my future.

Or I am back at the farm store,

the man leaning over me, pinching

the tiny buds of my new breasts,

sneering, calling me womanish

as I stare at the lines in the floor

until they blur into one smooth path

leading away from that place —

I am then nothing

but the light I see behind my shut eyelids.
 

Blue Book  — June 1911 

I wear my best gown for the picture — 
white silk with seed pearls and ostrich feathers — 
My hair in a loose chignon.  Behind me,
Bellocq's black scrim just covers the laundry  —
Tea towels, bleached and frayed, drying on the line.
I look away from his lens to appear
demure, to attract those guests not wanting
the lewd sights of Emma Johnson's circus. 
Countess writes my description for the book — 
"Violet," a fair-skinned beauty, recites
poetry and soliloquies; nightly
she performs her tableau vivant, becomes
a living statue, an object of art — 
And I fade again into someone I'm not.

 

Photograph of a Bawd Drinking Raleigh Rye  — E. J. Bellocq, circa 1912

The glass in her hand is the only thing moving —

too fast for the camera — caught in the blur of motion.

She raises it toasting, perhaps, the viewer you become

taking her in  — your eyes starting low, at her feet,

and following those striped stockings like roads,

traveling the length of her calves and thighs.  Up then,

to the fringed scarf draping her breasts, the heart

locket, her bare should and the patch of dark hair

beneath her arm, the round innocence of her cheeks

and Gibson-girl hair.  Then over to the trinkets on the table

beside her: a clock; tiny feather-backed rocking chairs

poised to move with the slightest wind or breath;

the ebony statuette of a woman, her arms stretched abover

her head.  Even the bottle of rye is a woman's slender torso

and round hips.  On the wall behind her, the image again  —

women in paintings, in photographs, and carved in relief

on an oval plane.  And there, on the surface of it all, a thumb-

print  — perhaps yours?  It's easy to see this is all about desire.

Disclosure  —January 1912

When Bellocq doesn't like a photograph

he scratches across the plate.  But I know

other ways to obscure a face — paint it

with rouge and powder, shades lighter than skin,

don a black velvet mask.  I've learned to keep

my face behind the camera, my lens aimed

at a dream of my own making.  What power

I find in transforming what is real — a room

flushed with light, calculated disarray.

Today I tried to capture a redbird

perched on the tall hedge.  As my shutter fell,

he lifted in flight, a vivid blur above

the clutter just beyond the hedge — garbage,

rats licking the insides of broken eggs.

Poems taken from Natasha Trethewey, Bellocq's Ophelia, pages 18, 34, 40, 44.