Spotlight on Andrew Shelley
shot
then one paranoid night you realize
you have turned into that person
who asked you to take their photo
standing lopsided in the box-garden
windows behind him, clothes too small for him
ruckling away from his body, one shoulder
hitched higher than the other and neck taut,
mouth slewed to the left trying
to squeeze a grin out of its other corner,
short arms held awkwardly
tight at his sides in his too small
special jumper from home duly
pulled out of a drawer
far away and packed
something to take back
and show he'd been here,
won if not approval, evidence,
recognition of his physical existence,
left some kind of trace, took it back,
the picture, so that they'd see him through
different eyes, tensely standing there,
fixedly hoping for something to say
if not why he was, that he was
you framed him, steadied, snapped
in the hot blazing sun in the small rose-garden littered with sins
with its maze of little gravel paths
and wicked wicket gate in one corner
He froze, as if for the blow, as you tried to get the edges straight,
clicked, handed back the black box with your self inside
and watched him as he walked away
in your flowery borrowed shirt and sports shorts
returning to the shuttered windows of your rooms bordering
the dry garden and eyeing you as you
sauntered up the crowded street in
his too-tight red jumper, cuffs up the forearms,
and too short long trousers riding
halfway up your shins
now long songs lament him at evening fading over the edge of the horizon
About Andrew Shelley: A refugee from academia and critical prose, Andrew returned to a long-held ambition to write creatively. He is currently drafting a fifth (unpublished) collection of poems. He has had poems in various little magazines, webzines and anthologies including the Oxbridge May Anthologies of Poetry and Short Fiction, the print-based magazine Kenning, and online in Ixion, Big Bridge and Aught. Previously published work is due to appear in the webzine A Writer's Choice and new work is forthcoming in Still, Snow Monkey and Skald. Individual poetry publications are Peaceworks (The Many Press, 1996) and Requiem Tree, forthcoming from Spectacular Diseases.
