The tourist taking cell phone
shots of the South Shore has
turned them into a turquoise cubist
feat. Grouped oblong images she
saves mirror sea’s choppy waves,
become a collage Picasso would
envy. The need to possess time,
souvenir everything like a home-
less person fills up a cart with
roadside debris. The selfie, a habit
to locate oneself, a toy icon to
lift up put down on a street view
google map. A move in Monopoly,
reduces a sited self in a palm
size screen to hold. I think of
early photos, stopped stillness
of a flash powder flare, burnt
sacrifice of the moment, the wait
for the weight to see what had
occurred, in order to remember.
Nancy Anne Miller is a Bermudian poet. Selected Poems is her twelfth collection (Valley Press, U.K., 2024). She has published in Edinburgh Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Salzburg Review, Agenda, The Fiddlehead, The Caribbean Writer, PREE. She has an M.Litt. in Creative Writing, Univ. of Glasgow, and is a MacDowell Fellow.
More work by Nancy Anne Miller
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