Monday, January 30, 2012

Magic Eye

Magic Eye

When you focus your eyes,
what are you unable to see.

The chair loses its doubled
silhouette, slims and simplifies

like a woman sucking in
her stomach and tilting her

pelvis out to exaggerate
the sharpness of her hipbones.

The undulating darkness
of a bedroom settles, stills.

Look more quietly. Make
the corner of your eyes

their new center, so you
can see what flits about

you peripherally, really.
Try not to startle it away,

whatever it it is, your two
pupils boring into it like

black headlights. Allow your
gaze to slouch, let it yawn

and stretch an arm over the
shoulder of your blind spot.

It’s been following you since
you recognized your first face.

9 comments

  1. Wonderful perspective even if 'peripherally'. And I understand that once you recognize that instant of that peripheral perspective and then you attempt to capture it full on visually it loses, ironically, that perspective.
    I do as little children sometimes do, covering with my hands my eyes where I can only see through a slight slither between my fingers.
    This is similar yet not the same.

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  2. perspective is so strange, isn't it? how many worlds exist in only this one? an infinite number, it seems. but i quite agree with your narrator, relax and jiggle it all loosely upon the horizon, or stop willing sight, and instead, allow it.

    xo
    erin

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  3. What ever happened to those "magic eye" pictures, anyway? It took me the longest time to be able to see them.

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  4. This would be wonderful for a videopoem, Hannah. I like that question posed in the first couplet and how it relates to the concluding lines about having a blind spot. Great metaphor.

    You have been writing what I think would make a wonderful chapbook on seeing, perspective, the big picture, and not.

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  5. have we ever seen the real world, or only one or another processed version, distorted by our visual apparatus and personal and cultural expectations? what would it take for us to step aside, get out of our own way, and look?

    "Look more quietly // ... Allow your / gaze to slouch ..." -- good lines and great advice :-)

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  6. : ) I immediately obeyed you and had to laugh at myself! I have practiced this before but never expressed as you did today. xx

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  7. The magic eye has indeed followed me all the way here to Las Vegas, and now i am haunted by my true face. It says this is not my clime, although I appreciate the sloth and restfulness of all this distraction. Love this poem , Hannah!

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  8. Reminds me of looking at things in all kinds of ways as a child.

    And sometimes as a grownup.

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  9. Love this line Hannah: "Allow your
    gaze to slouch, let it yawn and stretch an arm over the shoulder of your blind spot."

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