“Monkeyshines” is from MQR’s Summer 2022 Issue. You can purchase the issue here.
—on a Victorian England Celluloid Strip and Photo at Art Palm Beach The center of the room, lighted; the rest, dark; lace on a table; a Tiffany-style lamp—the grim man stands behind a seated woman with a slim, white object in her lap; lower-right, a watermark in the paper used for the print; beside, trademark company logo—a Phoenix, with fire like a scrim behind it—fitting, since this print is a postmortem one from the celluloid. (The Wizard of Menlo Park’s Monkeyshines was Edison’s first moving-picture film— a man in white wildly waving his arms around him.) If these seconds of celluloid were played in the dark, you’d see the man touch her shoulder, her touch him, knowing all you need to know about grief: the dead infant in her lap is little longer than a loaf of bread.
For more from the Summer 2022 issue of MQR, you can purchase the issue here.
