A neural, feral fix on the beautiful movie face
I went to Vietnam to adopt a kid
like a baby bird imprinted to the worst affliction, havoc, holocaust
I wanted meaning in my life
from my seat in the dark while I sipped a Coke
Poetry had failed me
a movie set, a rear projection, junk
slowly poetry had failed me
it seems. It's where the conversation took place
first as grace, then as skin, then
a back and forth like flame. It is where love came from
as woman as terminal being
as fetish-a thigh, a foot in heels-all of what we wanted
plucked up again and woven
fatality and church and commodity-something about to burst
the way it's supposed to work, to purl and circle
into my lap from my purchase in
you like the mats and baskets of the country a plush paranoia of the glance
the squat huts and women's carrying in the rain
of horror or color in our Wizard of Oz
that's still the third world
or Apocalypse Now Redux; redux
and corrupt as if America wasn't
hard to horrify, hard to please
everyone who speaks my language has bad teeth and
I can't remember in the film why in the first place
a hand out that wants to be greased
the government hired Ingrid Bergman
In the first place what's the word for want
but I remember the head lights and the curve
or want to have where have = pay = name =
the fragment of music, the set of keys
crime = proof of my desperation
the set of keys like coins or slow rain
then I enter a dark room
and a moment when the black white
like a latecomer to a movie
faces are all there are
where there's a table with a can of Coke
an infinitely prolonged walk up the stairways
and a bare bulb that's from a torture scene
dizzying and it's not the horror
I imagine-they say your mother was an American
but the pleasure that can be found daily
and I am broken down in front of
the infinitely prolonged kiss
the small boned men and I must insist
encircling glances, tracking shots, arabesques
in spite of it all I am fit to mother
the one dialect of shadow and the war, the girl
all this because of the failure of
the eye dilated |
