—After The Barns, Lake George by Georgia O’Keeffe

My father liked taking pictures, but had difficulty wresting them from the camera. They stayed stuffed inside Canon crawlspaces, behind the latch, memories stranded within. To show you his mirror lakes, his hike up to Armageddon, Christmas with us, or even his wedding, he would scroll back and forth on his device, squinting down at the small screen.

Well, even if he never figured out how to connect the cable from camera to desktop, Dad could build a barn after thirty seconds of rifling through an old Amish carpentry manual. His grandson raised one in the backyard as Dad’s flesh evaporated from his bones in the hospice bed where he waited for the next world. That thing was just a pile of boards, and the next moment, a magnificent edifice towering over the orchards of apples. Dave was like Dad, who could whip up a chicken coop or fix an engine without reference; just running his fingertips over a few tools was enough for him to know what to do next.

Who knows why the camera was trickier. I like to see things as symbols, say it’s all about how we embody him, hold him to the earth. We are his memories, in some strange way, not just the other way around. We are both inside and outside of that camera, flesh of his flesh, and ghosts in the machine.

Publisher’s Note:

The Barns, Lake George (1926) by Georgia O’Keeffe

O’Keeffe Museum Acquires Rarely Seen Work By The Famed Artist by Barbara Campbell at NPR (26 May 2016)

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Lake George Connection at Lake George dot com

Lorette C. Luzajic

is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a publication devoted exclusively to writing inspired by visual art. Her poetry and prose have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Bookslut, Calliope, Cargo Literary, Cultural Weekly, Everyday Poetry, Main Street Rag, Peacock Journal, Rattle, Taxicab Mag, and numerous other venues. She is a mixed-media visual artist and author of 22 books, ranging from collections of short fiction, essays, and poems to visual arts and photography. Her artworks have recently been exhibited in her home city, Toronto, as well as in the Yucatan, Mexico, and in Tunisia, North Africa.

Artist’s website: www.mixedupmedia.ca