The Cinema Scene on John’s Shoe

Christine Brandel

Cut to this:

you and I have dropped off the grass
and melt into the water Jesus walked
near. Our bodies are rich and warm
like coffee milk that rings your mouth
without your knowing it. John, you and I
are things that are poured down throats.
We are moving pictures. Stars hang low,
they coast above us. Nothing can shake this —
white marks only inches above our bodies.
We have our hands together, John,
we’re smiling. We’ve never been happier.

John, we met in a movie house and this action
was large on the screen before us. But it’s not us.
We don’t even know the man who wrote it. Not stars,
we’re just dark and transparent slips of film.
When our lovers hold us up to the light, they see only
one frame. No rivers or bodies moving, just one still scene.
Your freckled face and my pale one aren’t even there.
But, John, your shoe is.

© Christine Brandel

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Christine Brandel is a writer and photographer. In 2013, she published her first collection, Tell This To Girls: The Panic Annie Poems, which the IndieReader described as a “well-crafted, heartbreakingly vivid set of poems, well worth a read by anyone whose heart can bear it.” To balance that, she also writes a column on comedy for PopMatters and rights the world’s wrongs via her character Agatha Whitt-Wellington (Miss) at Everyone Needs An Algonquin. More of her work can be found at clbwrites.com.