Gravity Issue 24 - Terry Wright

Terry Wright

Crib Death

The empty blanket ripples like
a calm ocean and never knowing why
is the worst drifting after storms.
Neither science nor conscience is
much comfort. One can't hug

a theory whether dust, deformity
or heads stuck between the slats
and the slow water torture of what if
rewrites the facts. All that danger-
poison cheeseburgers, sweet strangers,

the pistol under the pillow, airborne
viruses or choking on a carrot
you just can't prevent. I recall
washing my hands, tying my gown
and sitting silent for hours beside

her small bed in infant intensive
care. With her arms outstretched
and wearing a clear air mask she pilots
her body for a fly by of heaven
but the headboard arcs like a bridge

on which our hands collide as she opens
her eyes. Her face burned white
from soaring too near the light seems
snowy, spectral, as if broadcast
back from distant unearthly provinces.

Based on a photograph: Child on TV (1962) by Lee Friendlander, from The Imaginary Photo Museum, edited by Renate and L. Fritz Gruber, Harmony Books, 1981.

Insecurity

How do you shut the sheepfold when the wolf is already inside?
--Betrand Giraud

It is so hard to see
the context behind the motions
of dingy ghosts. The most
we can expect is to mourn what
cannot be prevented. The camera
is meant to be pre-emptive but
shows ardent big brother gestures
and exposes only fuzzy specters,
an X-ray shedding light
on a terminal blotch. As James
holds hands all we can do is watch
and let anger blur like the grainy still
into split grief. How cute he looks
for a dead boy. We are too late,
impotent witnesses. We make
the leader older, a "youth," a "monster,"
the better to be less benevolent,
to construct a "fiend" and try an "adult"
although why are any of us
surprised? The news has been
in our faces: kiddie hackers
and Game Boy junkies are beyond
our control. We worry as
joystick pilots take out alien fleets
or shoplift what is most vulnerable.
The poor picture
No clear frontal image
captures both the crime and our love.
We see at last the mother P.O.V.
and as he walks under HERCARE
we know what woods await
outside,
out of our sight.

Based on a video surveillance still of James Bulger being led away by a youth in the New Strand shopping centre, Bootle, Liverpool, reproduced by the Press Association-London, cited in "Surveillance, Technology, and Crime" by Sarah Kember, reprinted in The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, edited by Martin Lister, Routledge, 1995.

Terry Wright: BOOKS: No More Nature (Kairos Editions, 1993) and Fun and No Fun (Pooka Press, 1984). MAGAZINES: Work has appeared in Slipstream, Urbanus, Rolling Stone, Puerto del Sol, Sequoia, Pig Iron, Tight, and many other publications. AWARDS: Winner of the Fiction Prize (1994) and Poetry Prize (1996) from the Arkansas Literary Society. Finalist for Arkansas Artist of the Year (1996) from the Arkansas Arts Council. EMPLOYMENT: Teaches creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas.