Cynthia Cruz
FRAGMENT
In the short black and white film
the platinum blonde with hair slicked back
leads a parade of boys and women
into a room. The moment of total exhaustion
is the moment when it all begins.
Inside the large crimson and silver scrapbook
I have begun fixing images of who I really am.
Inside the black and white clip
of Gosha Rubchinskiy’s The Day of My Death.
In the scene in which the boy in loose black
slacks and long brown hair sits inside the parked sedan.
I am looking directly at you, into the eye
of the camera. I have begun
preparations for my final performance
titled, tentatively, The moment of exposure,
is the moment when it all begins.
I have been trying to reach you
but all the lines are cut.
In the dream in which I keep waking,
I am trying to say something.
In the final scene
in which I do not speak,
I move my lips
as if whispering.
FRAGMENT: SMALL ABSTRACT
The sky here is strange in that
it appears the same as the sky
in dreams. Or else slightly less
chemical. And now the static has begun,
again. Smell of fume, and small white
flares beginning everywhere.
A black singe on the bright blue
carpet marks the beginning of demise.
Cruel and brute, and emptied
of meaning. Without nourishment.
In the landscape of industry and
commerce, I am nothing.
Just a vaseline-like smear or silver.
A medicinal, saliva-like blur
on the film, in the background.
Cynthia Cruz is the author of the poetry collections How the End Begins, Wunderkammer, The Glimmering Room and Ruin. Her fifth collection of poems, Dregs, was published in September of 2018. Cruz is the editor of the anthology of contemporary Latina poetry, Other Musics: New Latina Poetry (2019) and the author of a collection of essays on silence and power, Disquieting: Essays on Silence (2019). The recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder fellowship from Princeton University, Cruz teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University.