Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize Co-Winner, selected by the NEPC Board
Let us be as aperture: Homage for Maya Deren
ONE
[ PART FIRST ] in our only collaboration
I play a heroine possessed by
spirits during the siege of Dubrovnik
in the first scene I hear
music nobody else can hear drawing
me down concrete stairs to a
pebbled beach flanked by limestone fortresses
fig tree bluffs Adriatic opening and
I float a montage with views
of the Gate of Pila the
Gate of Ploča our creative project
forms in slow water with shale
deposits found in lakes and lagoon
sediment and in river deltas along
floodplains we ask what is the
intrinsic nature of black-and-white film in
her 1947 essay “Creative Cutting” Maya
Deren instructs that if the duration
of a shot exceeds the duration
of an action there’s a decrease
in tension thus Hesiod promises love’s
scarf protects the pulse at the
throat gulls banking gulls plummeting in
and out the spotlight our script
a collection of diagrams old letters
and news clips as we shift
from the self-as-object to the self-as-process
exterior entwines with history interior becomes
a desert film of uninhabitable regions
where sand storms articulate the psyche
because to perform a woman possessed
is to transform into a woman
possessed [ PART SECOND ] at each return
hold the camera in stillness registering
the inevitable shift of dunes effacing
wind-lines animal tracks this is my
material interior filmed at the height
of the sternum six inches from
the chest during the month of
extreme convulsion we speak of snow
in the past tense which does
nothing to lessen the duration of
April on heavier days I sink
into the sorrel pasture’s dank coat
finding creative vision in shale deposited
on the continental shelf in deep
quiet water a process taking millions
of years as when you walk
into the room you let the
breeze in gulls alternating the spotlight
set to the spider-lace scarf edging
hands’ low distraction Hesiod says love
if it is love performs loosening
and for this reason Deren writes
“a static shot of a building
becomes boring if held longer than
identification or appreciation requires” the camera
dictating descend the stairs nouning erosion
rebar sand the interior a desert
of glass not until reviewing the
footage did I realize you filmed
me that morning half-naked wandering through
sea holly and stonecrop to graffitied
ruins of the Hotel Belvedere de
Luxe Dubrovnik seventeen stories of abandoned
sand-colored stone cascading from cliff to
sea [ PART THIRD ] on off days
securing shutters against the city center
I spend afternoons in bed watching
YouTube videos of missiles launched into
the Fortress of the Passing Bell
into boats moored at the Old
Port while outside sun blares across
limestone walls and tourists here in
the midst of Adriatic floating I
discover filming the desert as the
always present absence in the middle
of a crowded room given a
static shot of something for example
a cliff skyscraper horizon we know
lasts longer than the duration of
the shot we feel nothing critical
will happen to the object after
it leaves our field of vision
consequently such camerawork creates in relation
to reality no tension wind gusting
through an empty ballroom’s chandelier Hesiod
says but do not forget love
says the field extending under gulls
angling the spotlight set to the
heroic scarf brought to the lips
this is creation as fissility and
we are shale splitting easily along
the bedding plane into small thin-lipped
fragments with rust stains from exposure
of pyrite to air blooming yellow
efflorescent sulfur and so yes now
split and now blossom [ PART FOURTH ]
in equating creative process with landscape
undergoing rupture we prepare to undergo
the permeability of shale increased by
force of fracturing fluid injecting water
sand and chemicals into sealed-off portions
of the borehole on the nightstand
two forms of history: a black-and-white
photograph featuring a limestone statue of
Dubrovnik’s patron protector of independence Saint
Blaise a model city cradled in
his outstretched hands this framed next
to an artist’s rendering of the
Hotel Belvedere de Luxe the angularity
of 80’s architecture softened by pastel’s
expressive gestures and de luxe in
floriated script sleepless I focus on
these images overridden by gulls ascending
gulls wheeling spotlight set to abstract
the Hesiod scarf worrying lungs’ low
breath loosening limbs of love interior
syntax cutting crescents over dunes as
black-and-white film deepens our pleasure taken
in the relation of illusion to
optics what if we are all
just avoiding a natural state of
uncertainty the very last sequence of
Deren’s short dance film A Study
in Choreography for Camera provides an
example of the use of duration
as tension the dancer taking off
from the ground for a leap
the shot cutting out while his
body continues ascending the frame [ PART
FIFTH ] this followed by a single
slow shot against sky legs travelling
horizontally the plateau of his leap
followed by a shot in which
he moves descendingly through the frame
to land with such softness in
contrast the force of applied pressure
causes the formation to fracture fracturing
fluid fissuring rock releasing natural gas
petroleum brine and what if we
are not objects but more properly
acts of relation our own apparent
boundaries a point of view created
by static forms imposed on dynamic
systems such as the sensation of
entering a darkened room its contours
subsumed by sandalwood and leather deep
in the ruins of the bombed-out
hotel I found history unbroken china
embossed with the hotel’s logo packs
of notepaper still sealed in cellophane
receipts calculated in the Yugoslav dinar
alone in the ruins I say
porušen pokvaren slomljen speaking a language
I never learned star dune seif
dune running parallel to wind over
contours of sand gulls plying gulls
whittling over spotlights set to love
the Hesiod scarf drawing a low
musical horizon first electrified then gone
dim I am perhaps too good
at playing someone else’s heroine and
this failure rather than some form
of desire often propels my own
films [ PART SIXTH ] gulls over sea
over fields low banking the coastal
scarf a Hesiod wind a soul
let loose in spotlight as the
throat reveals the heart’s low throb
Deren’s Study in Choreography has the
quality of slow floating yet creates
more tension than any other sequence
in her films for the leap
endures much longer than in actuality
it would and she allows no
single shot to satisfy the normal
necessity of gravity our most inventive
scene was a compromise filmed quickly
on the ferry to Hvar I
take a compact from my purse
wind unscarving my hair I peer
into the reflection my face replaced
by desert dunes a crescent moon
hung at the edge of a
white sky solid proppant usually sand
added to fracture fluid keeps the
fracture open even after injections stop
this creates flowback water requiring offsite
treatment for brine hydrocarbons metals and
radioactivity through a bombed-out hole in
the ballroom I emerge before an
empty pool tiled Adriatic blue cornflowers
and lavender endangered push through cracks
salt and seed wanting the building
back as the self unfolds in
twenty-four frames per second a species
of illusion but what is truth
Karla Kelsey is the author of
five books, most recently
Blood Feather (Tupelo Press, 2020).