Photographing the Tanager Bar
Insofar as I am trying to solve a problem, the problem consists of iron, lace and green.
As the problem consists of lace, the lace is suggested by the service entrance making lattice on a
man’s shirt as he leans over the bar.
As the problem consists of iron, the iron is in absentia.
Insofar as the iron is in absentia, one could consider it present, but only in the sense that a
lacemaker’s hands are present in the window of an antique shop after dusk as a
wedding dress turns the color of wheat.
As the problem consists of green, the green can be said to be unknowable—thin as a beachside
watercolor—as it seeps in with the light patches quilting up the lattice on the
white shirt that is turning the color of iron.
As the man’s shirt turns the color of iron these variables are apt to change as they are of this
particular light and therefore fleeting—apt to dissolve as the light dissolves when dusk
slips from the window of an antique shop with its meticulous fingers.
As the man is a variable and therefore fleeting, he makes a triangle with his shoulders and the
copper taps, thus referring to millennia of monumental compositions from the inverted
angle of bronze Herekles pulling his bow or the wedge of lemon sun in Bruegel’s Icarus.
As the man stopping in for a bourbon is both fleeting and monumental, he poses an additional
problem.
Insofar as he poses an additional problem, the solution is not to be found with iron, lace or
green, but with the long feather he set on the stool next to him, striped: brown and
white.
Inquiry: Color
Q: Are you color?
Are you cast?
Are you cast, colorant, coloration, complexion, dye or hue?
A: Are you glow?
Q: Are you intensity?
Intensity of paint or of pigmentation, of shade or of show, of show front or guise, mask or
plea, semblance or snow?
Are you crimson? Crimson or blonde, scarlet or copper, the copper light off the ice block as
the ice man saws a chunk free?
Are you the promise of sugar if I hurried home, the ice held away from my body to keep it
from melting?
A: Are you the brown paper unwrapping from the sugar before it dusts the ice?
Q: Do you lay bare?
Do you lay bare this blue?
This blue and this red?
Do you lay bare this man?
Do you lay bare this man remembering the light on the ice and is remembering a kind of
love, a kind that stutters like a stuck shutter?
Do you lay bare this yellow and this green?
And if you lay bare this lavender, this lilac, this linen, this magenta and if you lay bare--
A: And if you, before color
saw a woman walking,
old pelts clinging to her shoulder,
joined jaw to tail, frail,
face like the face of an iceberg,
and if you saw her in a dark crowd,
and the sun was bright
you’d know to burn in the sky.
Insofar as I am trying to solve a problem, the problem consists of iron, lace and green.
As the problem consists of lace, the lace is suggested by the service entrance making lattice on a
man’s shirt as he leans over the bar.
As the problem consists of iron, the iron is in absentia.
Insofar as the iron is in absentia, one could consider it present, but only in the sense that a
lacemaker’s hands are present in the window of an antique shop after dusk as a
wedding dress turns the color of wheat.
As the problem consists of green, the green can be said to be unknowable—thin as a beachside
watercolor—as it seeps in with the light patches quilting up the lattice on the
white shirt that is turning the color of iron.
As the man’s shirt turns the color of iron these variables are apt to change as they are of this
particular light and therefore fleeting—apt to dissolve as the light dissolves when dusk
slips from the window of an antique shop with its meticulous fingers.
As the man is a variable and therefore fleeting, he makes a triangle with his shoulders and the
copper taps, thus referring to millennia of monumental compositions from the inverted
angle of bronze Herekles pulling his bow or the wedge of lemon sun in Bruegel’s Icarus.
As the man stopping in for a bourbon is both fleeting and monumental, he poses an additional
problem.
Insofar as he poses an additional problem, the solution is not to be found with iron, lace or
green, but with the long feather he set on the stool next to him, striped: brown and
white.
Inquiry: Color
Q: Are you color?
Are you cast?
Are you cast, colorant, coloration, complexion, dye or hue?
A: Are you glow?
Q: Are you intensity?
Intensity of paint or of pigmentation, of shade or of show, of show front or guise, mask or
plea, semblance or snow?
Are you crimson? Crimson or blonde, scarlet or copper, the copper light off the ice block as
the ice man saws a chunk free?
Are you the promise of sugar if I hurried home, the ice held away from my body to keep it
from melting?
A: Are you the brown paper unwrapping from the sugar before it dusts the ice?
Q: Do you lay bare?
Do you lay bare this blue?
This blue and this red?
Do you lay bare this man?
Do you lay bare this man remembering the light on the ice and is remembering a kind of
love, a kind that stutters like a stuck shutter?
Do you lay bare this yellow and this green?
And if you lay bare this lavender, this lilac, this linen, this magenta and if you lay bare--
A: And if you, before color
saw a woman walking,
old pelts clinging to her shoulder,
joined jaw to tail, frail,
face like the face of an iceberg,
and if you saw her in a dark crowd,
and the sun was bright
you’d know to burn in the sky.
