Unreliable Narrations of Three Ansel Adams Photographs  

by Sam Selinger

A jeffery pine bends 
like a splintered lute. 
The shadow is a hundred empty hands. 

---- 

A white house and adobe church. 
Hills lift into distance. 

The room of the sky 
parades flashlights and geishas. 

---- 

The waterfall is process, 
a woman lowering her endless 
dress.

Variations on a Window, Late November   

by Sam Selinger

I

The windowpane made four rooms of the street. 

Umbrellas passed like black jellyfish. 

I put on some Debussy. 

The droplets on the glass whisper if 

and if. 

II 

A man stood, drunk, by a drizzling 

window. He was mostly his body, 

its clench of temples, unsound 

legs. On the glass, the yellows of leaves 

seeped out of their shapes. 

III 

The widow walked to the window. 

My longing, where has my 

longing gone? Someone had painted 

the last leaves pink and vermillion. She felt 

nothing. 

IV 

In two dimensions: carlights 

move like ugly birds through branches. 

Flat men and women in black 

parkas hug, which is, of course, 

impossible.

Sam Selinger is a senior in Gallatin, where he concentrates on Creative Writing, English and Italian literature, and trying not to think about next year. He has never written a poem while not simultaneously drinking tea.