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Freezeframe

by Emmalea Russo

Movie still from Hollis Frampton's Process Red. A hand holding a cigarette, peeling an egg, overlaid in violet

Freezeframe (Winter)

That’s winter hovering above the steps.
At its back, the ocean. Blue ground below
red sun above held by its opposite white.
Hands peel eggs, drink from ceramic cups, smoke 
cigarettes, tilt, lift, flutter in the film 
playing at its entrance. She reads a med
ieval guidebook on how to grow a soul 
simply or grow a simple soul. Not easy. 
First the film plays over and over at 
its own pace and then again and a
gain slower until frozen. She doesn’t know 
the man who belonged to those hands whose hands 
the film sent rapidly from hot to cold
and back again. Winter: cloud-slow poised

between upper and lower vaults.
                                                      Winter
hangs then speeds up, makes fast bright
her body and books, tinting the room white-
blue. Its pieces she quick freezes. See. See.
There’s prophecy
’s seeping line rhyming with the past it 
got conceived beneath. Children shriek outside 
her window, ocean churns never freezing.
She watches and reads the forlorn and 
manic mystics whose hands were held by 
a higher winter as split instruments. 
Steps to grow a soul simple painted 
                                                      white 
                                                      red
                                                      purple-black
There’s an order on the other side
too brightly lit to talk about, recall, gone.
An anemic red settles gel-like at winter’s
base bringing into bas-relief summer’s 
white heat. It rains as she eats, watches movie, 
looks at images of Lazarus raised
from the dead on screen. The soul gets fed pre
views through its own dents. Nabokov’s magenta 
and mulberry insides, and the strange, not
so good sea swell
with winter enter. 

The beach town empties. Its salt-fat hinges
thin. Wings on gulls make wind after wind 
against the hair of locals, faces red-blue with cold. 
Winter flew then froze, pale and old. Got made of 
what can’t be spoilt. So made. Dissolved its own 
frame. 

Pool: closed. Its cover shimmers with 
SUNRISE MARKET sign from above and above that, sky.
                                                                                                Sky: 
white as a screen, floor-hard,
sharp as a beam images pass over, though. 
First flat and smooth then wrinkled,
forehead-like. The color just beyond violet, 
before red is hard to get, to see, Goethe says, 
but it does appear. Sudden simple as old
ecstasy newly issued.

Freezeframe (Winter)

That’s winter hovering above the steps.
At its back, the ocean. Blue ground below
red sun above held by its opposite white.
Hands peel eggs, drink from ceramic cups, smoke 
cigarettes, tilt, lift, flutter in the film 
playing at its entrance. She reads a med
ieval guidebook on how to grow a soul 
simply or grow a simple soul. Not easy. 
First the film plays over and over at 
its own pace and then again and a
gain slower until frozen. She doesn’t know 
the man who belonged to those hands whose hands 
the film sent rapidly from hot to cold
and back again. Winter: cloud-slow poised

between upper and lower vaults.
                                                      Winter
hangs then speeds up, makes fast bright
her body and books, tinting the room white-
blue. Its pieces she quick freezes. See. See.
There’s prophecy
’s seeping line rhyming with the past it 
got conceived beneath. Children shriek outside 
her window, ocean churns never freezing.
She watches and reads the forlorn and 
manic mystics whose hands were held by 
a higher winter as split instruments. 
Steps to grow a soul simple painted 
                                                      white 
                                                      red
                                                      purple-black
There’s an order on the other side
too brightly lit to talk about, recall, gone.
An anemic red settles gel-like at winter’s
base bringing into bas-relief summer’s 
white heat. It rains as she eats, watches movie, 
looks at images of Lazarus raised
from the dead on screen. The soul gets fed pre
views through its own dents. Nabokov’s magenta 
and mulberry insides, and the strange, not
so good sea swell
with winter enter. 

The beach town empties. Its salt-fat hinges
thin. Wings on gulls make wind after wind 
against the hair of locals, faces red-blue with cold. 
Winter flew then froze, pale and old. Got made of 
what can’t be spoilt. So made. Dissolved its own 
frame. 

Pool: closed. Its cover shimmers with 
SUNRISE MARKET sign from above and above that, sky.
                                                                                                Sky: 
white as a screen, floor-hard,
sharp as a beam images pass over, though. 
First flat and smooth then wrinkled,
forehead-like. The color just beyond violet, 
before red is hard to get, to see, Goethe says, 
but it does appear. Sudden simple as old
ecstasy newly issued.