Acclaimed photographer Robert Giard traveled to Steven Riel’s home in North Amherst, MA to create a portrait of the poet for Giard’s project Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers. Prior to the photographer’s arrival, Riel began imagining having his picture taken and drafted a poem that became “After the Appointment with the Photographer Is Made” (see below). In it, he imagines taking Giard to his hometown of Monson several miles away. When the day came, Riel did drive the photographer to Monson, where a few abandoned mills remained. Giard photographed the poet in front of the A.D. Ellis & Co. No. 1 Mill, where textiles once were manufactured. While none of Riel’s family members worked in this particular factory (his grandparents were employed by mills in Worcester and Southbridge), many Franco-Americans whose ancestors emigrated from Canada to New England labored as factory operatives throughout Massachusetts.
After the Appointment with the Photographer is Madeyou want to show him your whole life
by taking him on a ride past the village which lost its factory to fire the Catholic school which wouldn't take you as a boy You didn't have a Polish last name Past rowhouses tacked over with roofing shingles One attic serves as Nadolski's studio the only other photographer you've sat before when you were school-age & perfect in a collarless jacket, a tiny bowtie with your brother & sister, the three of you still together in this life Then past the New Birth Christian Church that dyed your best friend's mind Past two of the few still-working mills that belch billows of bleached air down this threadbare valley Past the other church & the bingo sign where you were baptized in the ghost town that once boasted two five-and-dimes where you did all your Christmas shopping before the mall cut in Then up a hill & past two stubborn farms You want to tell him it used to be like this everywhere point out how stone walls trace the roll & sense of the land as they hug the valley's sides how boulders stand like consciences in the middle of pastures You want to explain this knockabout farm belonged to your fifth-grade teacher the one with dark hairs above her lip who was almost too big to get out of her chair yet whose fluttering fingers hovered over her blotter & taught you how to knot a thread You pass the duplex you were born in You wonder if he is taking this all in The Lakota feared a photographer would steal their souls under his black hood You fear he'll capture one look on your face but leave you shouldering this panorama of overlapping snapshots You can't help yourself turn your car under the granite archway into the cemetery your new center of gravity You squat down, brush sand from the stone as if wiping your brother's brow You say take my picture here (Reprinted from The Spirit Can Crest and Fellow Odd Fellow.) |
© 2023 Steven Riel
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