How to be a Photographer

As a poetry workshop facilitator for Voices UnBroken, I conducted an exercise from the curriculum that asks us to write a "How To" poem from the perspective of an expert. My resulting poem, which is still in need of revision, is below:

How to Be a Photographer


up-close,
down below,
up top, maybe
cropped—


streets and bees,
drying flowers—
your Muse inspires

you
lift your elbow, tilt it so,
scale brick buildings,
capture home.


press lens against a diamond gate
to keep the bubbled black and pink
graffiti in your pocket.


kneel or zoom in on
black basalt, limestone–
the nipple’s grit, abandoned
blue and orange bobo.


zoom out:
and silence the sweep of the sea;
or still the rafting nebulae.


sky clutter! shutter snap!
in leaves, catch falling memory.


Copyright Xiomara A. Maldonado 2009