- Video
A walk to the edge of cold beach Or even the wintergreen yard Are hazards I almost take.
Riveted to a monochrome movie Instead, a backbeat of storm Compels me to risk nothing but time.
Even then your features flash Before me like a news break That repeats itself in fact.
Onscreen, a cowboy is a cowboy And a woman a casserole Or a windshield wiper As much as any other thing Because a public is built On craft. There is no real acting
Unless you play the part Of an ordinary man Who stumbles into his old age.
There is only the movies’ mirror, Design razing the reels Of history with images.
If I could colorize each face, The apparel, the fence, briefly In my eyes the scene would rewind
And for a moment we would love Recklessly, in the fluorescent light Of the television, like the night [End Page 652]
Of someone else’s wedding: X-rated video In a Missouri motel. Like all films The still frames that compose
Motion are the dropped intimacies Between the practice of decompressing Our first, fluid compositions.
Diane Mehta has published poems in Salamander, The Formalist, The Columbia Review, and The Antioch Review.