New Direction

The film spins. Light’s needle touches, and doesn’t.

A piano cues. Wide shot. A yellow vase on the bookshelf.

Our bodies through the apartment’s window frame:

a swallow on the ledge, a taxi’s passing horn

         (the building torn down later that year)

you walk towards me

your bare feet gathering the floor from the floor

edge of your shirt at the shoulder, skin—

Focus, you dumbfuck,

a man calls from the next-to-last row.

Nothing clear about it.

                       Focus, which is to say clarity

means it just happened just like this

and I’m lucky for seeing blinds raised at an angle

your small unpainted toes

your hand touching my neck. Your open hand.

My open neck.

                         This ain’t what I paid for.

Where’s the action? Car crash, girl on girl, give me

something to remember.

                 I keep it happening, slow it down

                 Frame Forty-Five-and-a-Half.

Let each finger

press their finger weight, some force to skin

that can be outside and deeper like ice on the glass.

The film spins, light’s needle touches, and doesn’t

let me go.