there is no flash by Metta Sáma

February 10, 2015   there is no flash   Metta Sáma

the eyes               fine tuned          perhaps                          consciously    a first time offense to focus on     cliché                                 heaven             a great white trope:   the white light  the first time I nearly died             I reached too            towards                imaginary white lands of white hands draped in white robes white rings glowing above          white heads        instead I forced my niece to enter my mind            her first word   light       an opened fist of light                mouthed             see the light see the light see                    the light some midnight season of new moons        an annihilation        of the obscenity of the bright white flesh of a glistening cold moon poking through the night                                                        my father says                 show me the poet who knows       absolute darkness              is      the light       my niece sings this little light of mine & points in the darkness                   this little light see the light of mine I’m gonna let see the light                                friends                             there is no light at the end only hunger     muted                & sharp    blinding rage       of the mind’s kaleidoscopic emptiness      oh it is blindingly       white            Copyright © 2015 by Metta Sáma. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “This poem began as a response to a conversation between Terrance Hayes and Patricia Smith hosted by Cave Canem in New York City. Hayes read poems on photography and talked a bit about the photographic eye. In drafting the poem, I began to think about the interconnectedness of photography, death (some cultures believe that taking photographs equals the stealing of souls), the white light (as flash), the white light (as tunnel), the white light (as heaven), the white light (that surrounds saints and Christ), the white light (as the white gaze), and my ongoing thoughts about the white gaze of the photographer on the person of color as subject.” — Metta Sáma   Metta Sáma is author of After “Sleeping to Dream”/After After(Nous-zot Press, 2014). She directs the Center for Women Writers & the Creative Writing Program at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she also teaches. Photo Credit: Racquel Goodison Most Recent Book by Sáma   After “Sleeping to Dream”/After After (Nous-zot Press, 2014) "Our Daily Becoming" by Adam Clay "A blurry photograph" by Martha Ronk "Light breaks where no sun shines" by Dylan Thomas Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006,Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.