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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.


Cruz - Fragment: Small Abstract
Cynthia Cruz.jpg

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.

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