We're talking about marriage at dinner,
and couplehood, and my position on such institutions.
And also film.
And this poem deals with both, so here we go.
"Force of Visibility."
"Everywhere we went, I went in pigtails no one could see.
Ribbon curled by a scissor's sharp edge, the bumping
our cars undertook when hitting those strips
along the interstate meant to shake us awake.
Everywhere we went, horses bucking their riders
off holstered pistols, or two Frenchies
dancing in black and white in a torn apart living room
on the big screen.
Our polite cow faces lit softly by new wave cinema
I will never get into.
The soft whirr of continuous strip imagery.
'What is fascism?'
A student asked me.
And can you believe I couldn't remember the definition?
'The sonnet,' I said.
I could have said this.
Our sanctioned twosome.
My covert pigtails.
Driving to the cinema, you were yelling.
'This is not yelling,' you corrected in the car,
a tiny amphitheater. 'I will resolve this,' I thought.
'And through that resolution, I will be a stronger compatriot.'
This is fascism.
Dinner party by dinner party, waltz by waltz,
weddings ringed by admirers, by old couples
who will rise to touch each other publicly.
And enter theater traffic, you were yelling.
And beside us briefly, a sheriff's retrofitted bus,
full or empty, was impossible to see."