Michelle Ortega
Exposure
The verdant summer season lingers
until landscape all around me explodes
with yellow-orange-red fanfare;
It's not the time of year to shoot
black and white film, but I can't take
the color riot today; I'm tired of spectacle,
of illusionary action and distracting
celebration; craving the honesty of winter
starkness death's delicate architecture
I unpack my Minolta from its dusty case
load the Tri-X meander the path in the woods
with twisted grapevines and bent trees,
the ones that hold each other when they fall.
Bio
Michelle Ortega has been published at Tweetspeak Poetry, Tiferet, Snapdragon: A Journal of Healing, Shot Glass Journal, Platform Review, Rust + Moth, The Stillwater Review, Humana Obscura and elsewhere. Her chapbook, "When You Ask Me, Why Paris?" is forthcoming (Finishing Line Press, July 2025).