Innumerable Sightings of Edward

Before contact with Egyptian sculptors
she had no idea she was a surrealist

Adrift in an era of fading tradition and increasing lawlessness
she tried to recreate her life around memories of her father

She posed men poised against the sky with their children,
planted like trees in mother earth,
rag-taggle families of tinkers and wanderers

Orphaned now for many years
she didn’t know the difference between a family argument
and the purest hint of true violence
which she saw written all over childish faces
she had nightmares about their conflicts for many years

Over the years, innumerable sightings of her father
have proved to be thoroughly and tastefully unfounded

Working in a mental hospital, he photographed incoming patients
his grim, grey 1933 mural transposed to a world of strong light, intense color and heat
melted the eyes of curators in galleries out west

At home in Cincinnatti, he played slow, mournful tunes
and refashioned himself as a bluegrass troubadour

Things looked bleak, the old man's scratchy home made tapes
no longer offered her hope
basking in the tide of international goodwill, she couldn’t say why

A hangover from their days spent photographing religious meeting houses
other women and other women's children behaved in cruel ways
towards her, made her feel incomplete
she didn’t have a mommy

The outcome presented a clear choice
amalgamated with its similarly struggling rival,
mysticism and its connection with the very soil
she took her own life with the very blade
Daddy Edward used to splice together family albums