Weegee: Coney Island Beach After Midnight

No moon is good. I take off my shoes

And go silently so as not to lose

The shot I know is lurking there—

            American made

            Is my stock-in-trade,

As whatever’s in the frame I choose,

I chose, though it’s like I wasn’t there.

What’s out there? Why, sweethearts in love

Making love out where it’s dark enough.

I wouldn’t disturb them for the world.

             Each kiss, what’s left

             Between each breath—

Hard work, but the kind that makes you laugh.

There goes a match. What’s that I heard?

There, in the lifeguard station lookout,

Lovers exhausting each other’s doubt.

I’ll catch them fast without a flash:

            To make it clear

            How they appear

Like drags inhaling their way to ash,

Or a mouth getting ready to shout . . .

Too dark to have used the range finder there,

It’s like scooping yourself, your feeling, where

Trying to find the way, you’re caught

            (The frame in which

            Your subjects twitch)

Alive, exposed, and as if too near:

The lens opens and you take the shot.

Why they were up there near the sky

I thought I’d see as the fluid primed

The image into a final shape;

            But all I found

            Was a kind of sound,

A woman up there like a lie,

Alone and bewildered after the rape.

You can read the “Lifeguard Only” sign

She leans against. There’s no clear line

Between her hair and where the night

             Begins to fan

             Out in a plan

Expanding further than stars can shine,

And outside my frame to make it right.

What did she choose, which choice was deferred

As she waited for the bus without a word

No matter where she sat to wait?

             All that is there:

             The apparent stare

Out to the wave that can’t be heard

That she readies herself to contemplate.

(reprinted by permission of University of Chicago Press)