How will you frame me? A silhouette in a white sand desert, bleeding black into the thin line of horizon, spilling like ink, dissolving in abstraction? How will you write us? Doomed lovers in monotone noir, me, eye-lash lustful, lips parted, the only red? You, Bogart’s tough-shouldered goodbye? Who will I be in your next collection of lobotomized longing, dystopian despair, nihilistic crooning? And when you’ve shot, written me for dead, who will be your next fantasy, your next muse? Tell me. How you use art to seduce, lie. You don’t believe in love or belonging anywhere except your solitary hell and can’t live beyond the f-stop where depth of field blurs.
Catherine Arra is the author of four full-length poetry collections and four chapbooks. Her newest work is Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues (Kelsay Books, 2022) A Pushcart nominee, Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she lives with wildlife and changing seasons until winter when she migrates to the Space Coast of Florida. Arra teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. Find her at www.catherinearra.com