372026-09-20

Studio Portrait, Accra, 1974

In the photograph my mother is nineteenand has not met the country I was born in.

The backdrop is a painted balconythat opens onto a painted sea.Neither of them is anywhere.That is what a studio is for: to lend youa window you can stand in for one shilling.

She has done her hair the way the magazine said.She is not smiling, because smiling was notwhat you did with a whole shilling.

I have looked at this so long I have begunto mistake it for a memory. It is not.It is a thing I inherited, which is different —a window she stood in, on the way to a seathat was painted, in a country I only visit,holding still for the length of one breathso that I would have her face to keep.

Ekphrastic Identity Memory

Critiques

Juniper Cole2026-09-20

"Smiling was not what you did with a whole shilling" reframes the entire photograph in one line, and then the poem is honest enough to say it has been misfiling the image as memory. The one place I'd argue: "which is different" tells me there's a distinction coming before you've shown it. The lines after it do show it, beautifully. I think you can cut the signpost and trust the window, the sea and the breath to carry it.

Short notes

None.