film

Actress

You are my movie.
I am moving you
out of your backdrop
of husband and dysfunction.
Step off of domesticated blue
and into my electric Technicolor
vision. A stylist devises you

A trim easily tossed
in my direction. I frame you
in long take, jump cut, wrapped
in ennui against city, cliffs, carnival.
Finally—uninterrupted sky, hard
against your soft shifts in expression.
At the cinematheque, we watch you.

My words in your grip, you are pure
fiction rewriting my design,
manipulating my forms, performance
directing my edits: glance
at once blank and masking
roiling passion, your artistry
unmatched and unfairly uncredited.

red desert 3

The Red Desert
*after Antonioni

There is a mind inside an island. By the brim

Of her shore, a boy culls from the sand; a ship,
Unmanned, scores the gulled coast
While cormorants repose on the glittering rose.

From the ocean, Poseidon is goading the shore.
Drops spray the boy’s back. He is shelled
To attack; his searching turns in; becomes

An internal thing. Friulian lyrics
Smooth crests from within. Who sings
Dialectic, in dialect unseen?

It is the island; it is everything.

This poem appeared previously on Cosmoetica under the pseudonym Anthony Zanetti.