Revisions: Imogene Cunningham at Ninety - poem

Literary Review, Wntr, 1999 by Deborah Burnham

   She had seventy years of images inside her head
   and closet the year she won a grant to print some negatives
   she'd never seen on paper, only in the darkroom's wet
   and partial light. Her helper found glass negatives
   that she'd labelled "not worth printing" fifty years before.
   She printed hundreds of self-portraits, seeing her young
   self under all that bright, abundant hair daring
   the camera, knowing its stupidities and tricks.
   She printed her reluctant parents, almost as old
   as photography itself, posed by their cow
   who did not scowl or revile her graven images.
   Her memory was open for revision as she filled
   her tanks and basins, slipping sheets of paper
   into the dark water, watching a spiked plant bloom
   into silver arcs and shadows, watching faces
   glow in a hundred shades of gray more like flesh
   than flesh itself. Month after month she labored in the dark,
   like an old woman kneeling on a bridge, watching
   the faces of the dead rise like late white lilies in the
   black water.

Deborah Burnham was awarded the First Book Award from Texas Tech University Press for her work, Anna and the Steel Mill