Screen Dump 546

In the film you return to the temple

where an Egyptologist decodes the symbolism

in the placement of lines in this poem . . .

The dig fills with tana leaves

for a confusion of mummification . . .

You begin counting hidden chambers

crowding meaning off the grid

the elements of your Honors English style

tossed out the window

along with friends with benefits

at six degrees of separation

or five degrees of freedom

the statistics course from your first semester

troubling you with symbols

from the professor who wanted you desperately

to publish and perish

after leaving academia

for the bright lights, big city

of Alice's Wonderland

where socially-distant rehearsals

for an adaptation of King Lear in mime

took on a life of their own with wolves

howling silently like crazy for Cordelia . . .

Andrea Riseborough in Luxor (2020)

 Screen Dump 545

The reader peering out of the lines

of this poem filled with happenstance

steps back 60 years

to a wiffle ball game on a dead end street

in an old neighborhood . . .

A viewer pausing the stream

to raid the fridge . . . reminds us

that syntax creates tension . . .

backpedaling on a polished surface

as players shaking in their

Chuck Taylor All Stars

step up to the plate . . .

It is a time of ambiguity . . .

episodes tumble out helter skelter

for analysis by anchors

broadcast live in fuzzy black and white . . .

The wiffle ball game began

in the heat of noon

and continued into twilight . . .

Stoop sitters . . . with drinks . . . watched . . .

among them long-legged Trudi

who lived alone in a first-floor flat . . .

a regular . . . cigarette in one hand

Zippo in the other

in curlers, mascara, and white short-shorts

zippered in back

who later slid into the back seat

of a black DeVille

leaving the players with two men on

and a full count of 14-year-old wet dreams

sucking on plastic-tipped Tiparillos

pilfered from May's News . . .

a front for numbers

on the corner of Hibbard and James . . .

the backstory left sitting alone

beneath the dim dead end street light . . .

Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976)

Screen Dump 544

The day . . . drenched in AI . . . opens with intermissions . . .

Someone somewhere over the rainbow perhaps is soliloquizing . . .

This shift in paradigm is busting out of jail . . .

The omniscient one . . . elsewhere . . .

continues to worry the lightening-fast script changes . . .

needless . . . by most accounts . . .

Your text flips the conceit of strangers passing you around

in the language of tractor trailers with assigned seats . . .

Big rigs . . . come and go . . . flustered . . . idling the early morning fog . . .

The ice rink looms . . . festooned unexpectedly . . .

You will attempt a pirouette sometime today and get YouTube'd

and your aside will begin . . . trapped in imperfection . . .

It was here . . . yes, here . . .

Roberto Kusterle