Coggins & Mureddu – Feb. 16

Angel Aragón Mureddu and Lauren Coggins traded art and words. Angel shared this piece, entitled “Daedalus 1,” with Lauren:

In response, Lauren wrote this poem:

When I Worked At the Camera Shop

We’d stand by the two-eyed cameras
in the case, Mr. Butcher and I,
those twin lenses looking back

in parallax – the Rolleis and Yashicas,
a Seagull or two – their frames of view
like little Venn diagrams. I would start

to find myself alone on the sales floor,
the others having slipped away at the sight
of his senescent Buick outside, his white shirt

and brown trousers. He always made
for the bargain bins of mismatched straps
and cases, and those oldest

of our used cameras – like buddies
he’d come to see. He said he’d carried
cameras like them in the Army, and later

with his wife, on the Queen Mary
to Europe. Mechanical and modest,
made to be cradled at the waist

and looked down into, with viewfinders
of ground glass, with cranks and winders
and soft spoken shutters

that, winking, had once in the colors
and contrast of Kodachrome
told him a heck of a thing.

* * * * *

Lauren shared this poem with Angel:

A Night and the Next Morning

I am tired tonight,
when I think how we drift
like stars across the dark desert
of sky, oases lost

in the city’s perennial glow.
Orion points his chest
toward a moonrise almost
formality – a habit

we might break
if we cared, rote reminder
of days dwindling
to winter Solstice.

The routine of our own fading
condenses memories
to snapshots, a night
and the next morning

becoming moments –

in a year
just a silhouette, that trace
of dust on the table,
or the way good morning
sounded guilty

In response, Angel made this photograph, entitled “Where the Star Rests Everyday (Absence)”: