poems to be read at the cinema
Oswald del Noce
I don’t know if you’ve noticed
there are more shadows in a movie theatre
than in a circus
doors are moving through light projections
casting gigantic butterfly wings
on the slanted red carpets
those little lights like the aisles of a plane crash
the last moments in mid-air
I don’t know if you’ve noticed
with those distracting heart-attack red lips
moving like crab claws, mirroring the carpet
that the world is a burnt piece of firewood
adrift on a river
no sound survives beneath the surface
and I guess this is a love poem
or a horror poem
a poem of murder, and jealousy and rosacea-eaten-nosed militaries
who hide their last cigarette in their asshole—for the country
they say
yes well, whose country
let’s make this a poem,
whether love or horror mangle
its gentle lines
to be read at the cinema
where giants with infant hearts beating to make the next beat
can enjoy
the smell of cedar and lavender
and hands will search among velvety armrests and
the dead will teach us something about self-pity, or about the change of seasons
or about the wind which I’ve never understood
Bardot, Sofia Loren, Cantinflas and
Godard will be there
and Kieslowski’s death
will be remembered
by now I’ve found your
hand hidden among the architecture of cinema seats
the pictures moving boldly across the room
that train-track projection, jelly-fish suspended in air,
patron saints of microscopic dust
and you moviegoers
Stand up!
proclaim your poetry while the
reel runs dry and the images shout into the dark
and movie star divas pass precious stones
under seats
claws to hooves and on to simian hands
Oswald del Noce was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He dropped out of the California College of the Arts and moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2006. In 2010 he obtained a B.A. in Latin American Literature at the Universidad de Puerto Rico. He lives in Berlin, Germany.
