After Charles Wright
I can’t describe the photograph
with the clarity of the photograph.
That is the anxiety of the image.
I can’t describe the groan in my head
without imbuing it with a sense
of pain or sexuality. I don’t intend,
though it is a groan, and it is
in my head, and it comes out that way.
I don’t know what I intend,
which is what makes it deep in me.
What is deep in me, I understand
the least. When I lay one word down,
it is consummated by the prediction
of the next, made too whole, my claim
on that word, betrayed. Description
is a public; it cannot be portrayed. ◆
Homepage Image: Verónica Gaona, Migrant Metropolis, 2023, from Issue 38.2, Summer/Fall, 2026.
