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Letitia Trent
Secretary (dir. Stephen Shainberg, 2002)
Eyes? Pink lids.
Collapsed, shed
snakeskins. He makes
her fetch. She bends over
wide. Makes her examine
her mistakes. The double I
in her type. She bends deep—
rows of band-aid stripe.
Something in his
tamped eyes—dried
petals—brights. She ties
it in the bow around
her throat. She throws
her scalpels, razors
and scissors into
the river. Viewer, do you
understand her, do you
want to please him? It ends,
piss on her dress, his we can’t
do this forever. Her why not,
her red hands on the desk
until he comes.
She remembers, rapture, how
he tugged himself
and stared, but refused
to touch her. It ends in white,
a run across
the chemical lawn
into his grim leathers. Viewer,
I want to know, do you think
Why Not? all in capitals,
Why Not? She takes
his instructions, but tucks
a bug in his tight,
precise bed and little
smiles. She sees—
but we cannot!—the future:
a calendar full of morning
glory pinpricks, of petal-
mottled reds.
The Bourne Ultimatum (dir. Paul Greengrass, 2007)
Viewer, you are the woman,
the camera, and can’t keep
your eye on just
one victim. Capture the gut punch;
knuckle to the socket; the lapel twist,
screwing the neck-hole
closed, the throat still
inside it. Closeup
on the flushed face,
bug-eyed.
The hero’s haircut—boxes
and buzz—implies a solitary
precision. He’s all zeros
and ones. He’s a toy car
in the corner,
ramming the drywall.
The camera sweeps
his foreign apartment. Note
the dim rooms, the twisted
plumbing. The body sags
by a spraying toilet.
Viewer, you rinse
in the dirty sink and jab the scissors
at your scalp.
He’s watching from the mirror’s
speckled corner. You’ve touched him, but only
in metaphor. Now, take a harsher hair color,
some pedestrian pink
sweater sets to confuse them. The hero’s face
cannot move a centimeter
beyond guilt or determination.
The words between you are pinched
and fictive. This cannot
be overcome by acting. You mouth
your lines with perfection. You are the viewer,
too, and still do not know
what has happened.
Kairo (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)
The fine-boned girls
in ballet flesh ride
the sugar bowl alone,
holding their sizzles
in the women’s candy stick,
as velvet and red as a mound
of lilies. Their short slashes flair
around their thickets.
For eleven thousand yesses,
a man may enter
and a young woman
will stand, clutching
the bat in her throat-buttoned
blossom. For twelve,
she’ll moan in alley cat.
I don’t understand their
rickety-raw. Nobody kisses
in grinding. All glad girls catch
in lathers. Some are deadlights
already, their pale skin thin
over winter bonfires. Some live,
their hankerings tapping
for a kiss. Here, The school glad bags
will undress if you give her
the proper ace in the hole.
A girl folds her small lemons
under her thingamy and waits
for the telophile to erupt
in static. One slips a black bag
over her heat seeking missile.
There is a ghost in my compulsion,
the boy says, but he’s alone
in his room, and the
tender button hisses.
Outdoor Life
Harden. At dawn. Bury
the kitten. Sun’s ****ing
up again. I’m gonna shoot
it tomorrow. Pink, then
red then blinding blue.
They find a mouse inside
the pantry. The boys kill
a copperhead in the woodpile.
In the forest you can sometimes
step in viscera. Barefoot, I slit
my arch on a hard, dried blade.
One month without seeing anyone
I couldn’t crush between
my fingers. During deer season,
the orange-vested hunters walk right
through our yard. The red bugs run
bright sores all down our dirty
knees and ankles. The perfectly
round reflected clouds scuttling
across Sardis Lake’s black
tree studded surface. The snake
holds its fat head above water,
but when it passes we slide in again.
Risky
The snake holds its fat head
above water, but when
it passes we jump in again.
At first I was scared, she said,
but I learned to like it after.
He took her hill hopping and her
forehead split on his dashboard.
His body hit the river’s surface
like an egg against the linoleum.
His class ring diamond is a purple
star above her eyebrow.
He stole pop from the vending machine
because he loved me. His daddy
stood and cried just like a baby.
We drove fast and my stomach
felt sick. It felt like something
from a movie. He didn’t feel nothing
until later. She didn’t feel anything
either. The preacher started crying.
That’s Jenny’s boy. ****ed up. Pity.
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