Steven Riel and A.D. Ellis & Co. No. 1 Mill, Monson, MA, 1992. Photo by Robert Giard.

Acclaimed photographer Robert Giard traveled to Steven Riel’s home in North Amherst, MA to create a portrait of the poet for Giard’s project Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers. Prior to the photographer’s arrival, Riel began imagining having his picture taken and drafted a poem that became “After the Appointment with the Photographer Is Made” (see below). In it, he imagines taking Giard to his hometown of Monson several miles away. When the day came, Riel did drive the photographer to Monson, where a few abandoned mills remained. Giard photographed the poet in front of the A.D. Ellis & Co. No. 1 Mill, where textiles once were manufactured. While none of Riel’s family members worked in this particular factory (his grandparents were employed by mills in Worcester and Southbridge), many Franco-Americans whose ancestors emigrated from Canada to New England labored as factory operatives throughout Massachusetts.

---

After the Appointment with the Photographer is Made

you want to show him your whole life
by taking him on a ride

past the village which lost its factory to fire
the Catholic school
which wouldn't take you as a boy
You didn't have a Polish last name

Past rowhouses
tacked over with roofing shingles
One attic serves as Nadolski's studio
the only other photographer you've sat before
when you were school-age & perfect
in a collarless jacket, a tiny bowtie
with your brother & sister, the three of you
still together in this life

Then past the New Birth Christian Church
that dyed your best friend's mind
Past two of the few still-working mills
that belch billows of bleached air
down this threadbare valley

Past the other church & the bingo sign
where you were baptized    in the ghost town
that once boasted two five-and-dimes
where you did all your Christmas shopping
before the mall cut in

Then up a hill & past two stubborn farms
You want to tell him it used to be like this everywhere
point out how stone walls trace
the roll & sense of the land
as they hug the valley's sides
how boulders stand like consciences
in the middle of pastures

You want to explain
this knockabout farm belonged
to your fifth-grade teacher
the one with dark hairs above her lip
who was almost too big to get out of her chair
yet whose fluttering fingers
hovered over her blotter
& taught you how to knot a thread

You pass the duplex you were born in
You wonder if he is taking this all in

The Lakota feared a photographer
would steal their souls
under his black hood

You fear he'll capture one look on your face
but leave you shouldering this
panorama of overlapping snapshots

               You can't help yourself
               turn your car
               under the granite archway
               into the cemetery
               your new center of gravity

               You squat down, brush sand from the stone
               as if wiping your brother's brow

               You say
               ​take my picture here

(Reprinted from The Spirit Can Crest and Fellow Odd Fellow.)