EYES FOR EL SALVADOR

TALKING TO THE CAMERA

The  challenge this morning,

waking with coffee,

if one can be so fortunate

to wake with the pacamara bean

native to Salvador,

is not to take one side

or the other,

but to take the side

of those who have

no side. The challenge

in every morning.

Challenge is a horrible, horrible,

horror-harrowed word in itself.

Machine-gunned book

doesn't need a text, but in others

at museum of martyrs

I've been trying to use

layered light, and reflections

to create an off-balance viewing

because I'm off-balance.

Cell phone camera

exaggerates reality.

But how does one exaggerate this,

I ask, even as I find myself

inside glass, wearing the pants of Ignacio Ellacuria?

Try his work. 

Or, try the letters of Jon Sobrino

to his dear friend Ellacuria.

The cross

on the cassock

is a reflection of light,

seis triangulos de luz

created from mirrors.

Looking into martyred

glass, I know

that everyone died,

their lives surround us.

My country’s bullets ‘tis of thee

Track lights lighting images

under glass point in different directions

turned into photographs themselves.

Neutral eyes, no, not neutral,

not sentient, not from here.

The alba and estola of Monseñor Romero on a wired mannequin

blurred and blood-soaked robes of the night that will never end

and the white undershorts of a priest under glass.

In a museum, no less.

Here is the palimpsest that unravels me—

reflection from glass in front of me

reveals the mirror behind me

two pairs of pants, a robe, bullet-ridden shirt,

colleagues on the other side of the glass

photographs where a pants pocket might be,

my hand and the camera

coming in from side right

walking away from all the listeners

beneath a cross under glass that might

be seeing around corners.

How this diagonal band of light

from the rose garden

where the bodies were laid

found itself crossing this book

I will never know, but sky, blossom, leaf,

shimmer fixed on the page

over psalm and gospel.

Bullets under glass

labeled

Masacre de El Mozote,

10 diciembre de 1981

also with rusted cartridge cases

and burned-out wooden cross.

Any photograph of Rutilio Grande

anytime, anywhere, point to who’s calling me

eyes and fingers in the painting

of the dead Romero

going every whichway

including closed

Muerte y resurección de Monseñor Romero

Pintura de Benjamín Caña

More photos of Rutilio

than anyone else

reflects my bias

That’s me beneath the cross

owning my own whatever you want to call it

in whose martyred clothes

oh my God, here’s a pair of pants

hanging from a wire

with photographs for pockets

and three books where a belt should be!

Unlabled, and after-all the times

I’ve seen it waking in dreams

I’m going to call it a burned-out painting

heat created by mass murderers

funded by my country

call this a rant

I still see a human eye

under the bubbled-canvas

cut-out below where an eye might be

and I see human flesh beneath it

can’t be accounted for

get yourself another guide

if you want to, if you can

don’t believe everything you hear

go back to sleep if you can

When I look again,

photographs go all the way to the knee.

And there’s that chair again

empty but for the draped stole.

Jim Bodeen

2005-2015

EYES FOR EL SALVADOR

People making small talk

on way to work site.

I never learned how,

feel my own emptiness.

I listen, watch.

Sometimes ask a question.

I love this drive

to the work site.

A man hangs out the bus,

standing on steps,

waving, bus door

wide open,

his arms out,

signaling.

His bus in the fast line.

His driver’s

pushing it,

wants to make

a lane change.

Our bus

isn’t in much

of a hurry,

neither am I.

Jim Bodeen

22 January 2015