Photograph of a Woman Who Fell off Her Bike (ROUND 3)

Let's workshop this poem about a photographer obsessed with an artistic calling that has taken over his life like a demon

scent of the day: Opus X, by Amouage. A unique take on a gothic fragrance (vampiric, as opposed to witchy or warlocky) and one of the most artsy Amouages I have smelled, Opus X takes hyperrealistic rose (jammy rose like in Imitation Man while also rose-water rose like in Lyric Man) and mixes in hyperrealistic blood (salty and metallic, iron-rich like in a menstrual clot)—the end result being, especially with the help of the musky animalics from the Loatian oud and the leather accord, an extremely evocative impression: a lacquered wood coffin full of rose petals and inside of which Dracula performs toothy cunnilingus on a menstruating woman (one perhaps he feeds from consensually), a regal woman (perhaps a literal queen) in a Victorian era where heavy rose perfumery was used to cover up body funk humming under all the elaborate layers of corseted gowns.

Photograph of a Woman Who Fell off Her Bike

Suspiciously chipper, Jacques-Henri broke the silence.
“Let’s say we bring the bikes out for air!” His motive,
she knew (like the rhythm of his manias), was to take
photos with the clunky mistress he often held in bed.
And yet the pride of being a genius’s wife, the pillar—
cooking, cleaning, fucking—on which his work relied
(a fact he never let her forget), could not but grease
the gears of wishful spin that winch humans starward.
More secure that she would not expose his own tale
than that she bought it, he paused in the doorframe
and went back for the camera (a wink of just in case).

A few strides ahead along the trail, she flew headlong
over the handlebars—BMX anachronism magnified 
by her high-bodice dress (think: Miss Gulch). “Watch
for roots!” he had screamed, his warning still hanging
as she face-planted. She began explaining how the hem 
got caught, snagged in the gears, when she swerved
to avoid roots—hoping this testimony of happenstance
would forestall his certain criticism, would dissuade 
the lecture on what she should have done to avoid 
such a dramatic culmination. Seeking injury’s pardon,
she groaned for her scraped knee and her soiled dress.

Any interest in critiquing her technique, in turning this
into a teachable moment, folded under the weight of art—
(unlike the goat leather bellows of his camera). The shot,
whether it boiled down to void-evading obsessive rituals
(nibbling, pacing) in zoos of boredom—that dictated all.  
It was for the shot that he had her press her face back 
into the weeds. “Vite!” he yelled, his urgency laced 
with five-second-rule logic. He adjusted her bonnet
(tweaking its drama, just enough to look unposed),
then dashed to his spot: where he was when she fell. 
She was happy to oblige, to be spared his scolding.

Photo Credit: the great Jacques-Henri Lartigue