WEBVTT

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"Portrait with Flashlight"
is for my friend

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the poet Henri Coulette,
and it originated

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with something he told me about
his adolescence in New Mexico.

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He said he learned about
life from the period

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when he worked as an usher
in the moving picture

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house on Saturday afternoons.

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And his best known poem,
best poem in some ways,

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is a poem called "The War
of the Secret Agents."

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That's referred to in passing.

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"Portrait with Flashlight."

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What lonely isles you prowled
in search of the forbidden,

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blinking your usher's torch,
firefly of the balconies.

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And when you found
it, love, it was

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to pure French horns
soaring above the plains

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of Saturday's westerns.

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The defiant eyes laughing
into the sudden beam,

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the soft Mexican curses, the
stains, the crushed corsages.

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Poor spy, there's no disguise.

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Your heart's as
dark as theirs was,

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and it speaks with the
same broken accent.

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Those flowers, they
blossom again now,

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tender buds of
migraine, souvenirs,

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and you call them poems.

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Poems with hair slicked back,
smelling of bay rum, sweat,

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and hot buttered popcorn.

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Furtive illuminations.