Carol Chalik, 1945– ?

by Gerard Malanga

       She could’ve been famous in her time or in some future time, had someone
taken notice, mentored her, paid homage.
But I remember reading somewhere
how we create our own destinies,
how photographs likewise seal our fates. So she’s nowhere
to be found, fated as it were.
                                                 Perhaps some quiet backwater
or in the bowels of Brooklyn or Manhattan.
The whereabouts of where, the plains of Kansas, the echoing Midwest. For all her 15 years
Time stopped, a guessing game
no older than when I remembered her and don’t remember her.
Her youth preserved.
A life lurking in the oblique shadows,
criss–crossing streets. Reflections in shop windows
unrecognizable. Memories gone haywire and gone blank.