Nothing More Than Digital Scores

An ekphrasis of Digital Scores (after Nicéphore Niépce) 1995 by Andreas Müller-Pohle

Charles Broughton

It’s the striking of a match,

sliding a thumb dipped in sulphur

against a screen of phosphorus.

It’s the snapping of a lighter

when I click to open, and a silhouette

with every freckle and pockmarked pore

softly shines and strokes and spotlights

the bags under my eyes,

the light of your skin,

a blue tinted shadow 

donning a cave of memory 

cast by a candle of 1s and 0s

silently flickering in your eyes

of tempered glass,

wherein stroking your hair

is like clutching Proserpina’s marble thigh

or Daphne’s wooden stomach; 

real, 

that is, 

at least 

before my finger flattens 

against the superficial sunlight 

emanating from the shadows

that bleed through retina displays 

and are received by my own,

whilst memories of your lips 

are keys to the chains

tying me to this cave,

and these wisps

of our former selves, 

no longer a single being 

when our hands were one,

now cut with the flesh 

of my fingertips resting 

on the window of the internet

like Magritte’s The Human Condition:

a faithful, 

yet seductive,

falsity.

Image source: Andreas Müller-Pohle, Digital Scores III (after Nicéphore Niépce), 1998, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, © Andreas Müller-Pohle.

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Charles Broughton is a writer and poet based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. With an MA in English Literature and a background in art history, his work explores theopoetics, art, myth, and femininity. His writing has been featured in literary journals Oscen, circular, Viridine Literary, and The Dark Poets Club, and can also be found at @nicholasrhodespoetry on Instagram.