David Cazden: “Vertigo”
VERTIGO
I scroll through Kim Novak’s webpage
of paintings―butterflies and elves
in pastel, on misted boughs.
Just below, her self-portrait
as she once was―hair drawn tight,
shaped in a question mark
as many women would, planning
to disappear. Despite her story
on the page, I can’t forget
her transformation in the movie―
returning in straight brown hair,
a plain pleated dress, disguised
as her own true self.
Perhaps she reminded me of you,
when you married and returned.
The movie, too, was in limbo,
trapped in Hitchcock’s estate―
its skyblue celluloid frames
fading in a drawer, its metal reels
rattling with unease, like branches
on the windows.
When we finally met, we could see
in each other, seasons brighten
and fade. So we watched
the movie again
and the story unwound―
down spiral streets, steep
as double helices―a city’s
staircase of DNA―
concrete, grass, sun.
The plot unfurled
whispered and slow,
as if it were you and I
on the avenues and esplanades,
conversing in cafes and porticoes
in a story not our own.
We could never understand
each scene, or the mystery
of the end―Yet after
I took you to the airport,
on the way home,
I had this feeling of falling
before I fell―
the ground rising up,
a turquoise sky above.
David Cazden has had his poetry appear in various places, such as Passages North, Nimrod, Talking River Review, Kestrel, Midwest Quarterly, Louisville Review, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. He has two books, Moving Picture (Wordtech, 2006) and The Lost Animals (Sundress Publications, 2013). Cazden was the poetry editor of Miller’s Pond for five years.