There are crumpled-up poems
Old magazines, dried fruits
A photographer roams
Rolls of film in her peach-pink suit
She must document this:
All the dreams of the now-dead youth
Scorched guitar strings
She's a sentient sleuth
Snap! A photograph
Of a leopard skin worn
By a woman
Whose flesh was torn
By a rhino--hey!
It's a golden key in a window!
See? How the plants grow sideways here
There's a child at the bottom
Of a well, oh dear.
There are shriveled
Lizard tails in jars, dust, skulls
Cold bodies of old cars
Take a photograph
There are cracked bones
Receipts from old folks' homes
Busted telephones
Take a photograph
The photographer
Can't stay long or she'll get trapped
Can't get too involved or too rapt
She has to go back to her child
Who is so unlike that child in the well
And once back, she has to make sure
That her photographs sell
So she can feed her babe
And that's how the wasteland paradise
Made its way into an infant's mouth
And it all went south
from there.
