Confetti, Liquid Perception
1
In the bright grey afterglow of celebration
last night’s confetti sticks to the wet ground.
Pause. I wait for a phone call in the gold dress
I slept in. Agatha and the Limitless Readings
is a blue-grey Marguerite Duras film I looped
all year. Trouville, France. March 1981. A drawing
room in an uninhabited house’s saturated perception.
2
There are two dusks, says Duras. Summer and winter.
Winter dusk is truer. Looping gel and lustrous.
Wide shots of the ocean where sounds come
unclasped from images. To see voices
become clairvoyant.
Between sound and image, brother and sister, ocean
and ghost ship, arena of grey spillage.
Where is this?
3
It’s impossible to gather. Ocean. Film
slides into the foreground. I exit.
Night boat phenomena under speech, marine
silence. This melted attempt to sweep camera pan
over. Reading empty interior of drawing room
blown out malady. Here:
My grandmother leaves for another place.
A shot of the sea the sea seems to be sleeping.
A black screen this is suffering. Water I’m leaving.
The book blurs
sequins and matte paper
water’s knife edge to sidewalk.
I can’t see, she says. Fluid vision
we swim then back to film. It’s 1981 or 1961
or 2021 when I read sea’s gelatinous weeds.
4
Thirty-nine minutes in, I begin.
Page, ocean, page, ocean, detuned television.
In the clinic’s hallway near the other dusk
a sign across from the elevator reads
throw kindness like confetti. The silver
doors open viscous aquamarine hum
blue light spun from soaked palm.
Emmalea Russo is a writer living at the Jersey shore. Her books are G (2018) and Wave Archive (2019). Her poetry and writings on film, philosophy, and art have appeared in Artforum, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Granta, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Review of Books, SF MOMA's Open Space, and elsewhere. She is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy and she edits the multidisciplinary journal Asphalte Magazine.