black and white photography
Hollow Wean
Dear Sir,
a beauty company sent me an email,
‘We win, you win’ it said, invited me
to purchase youth serum at half price.
There is something I hate about emails
sitting black on white on screen:
comma after verb easily mistaken for
philosophical pause or breath taken
when reading poems aloud.
‘Please, do not reply’
it carried on ‘we hope to see you again.’
I have a hundred things to do but
rush to the bathroom to see how deep
the line cutting my glabellar region
has grown since I last checked.
A fair amount I notice. Others joined
the frontal network, showing people
how much I’ve won in forty years
of living too small, dreaming too big.
©Maria Stadnicka, 2018
East
Economy
Photography: ©JStadnicki, 2018
World Cup Suburbia
Photography: ©John Stadnicki, 2018
Wales. Time spent somewhere other than here.
‘It is unfortunately hard to recall our quasi-permanent concern with the future, for on our return from a place, perhaps the first thing to disappear from memory is just how much of the past we spent dwelling on what was to come; how much of it, that is, we spent somewhere other than where we were.’ (de Botton, 2002)
Photography: ©John Stadnicki, 2018