By Claire Millikin

In Tifton, near Cairo and Americus, grandfather watches
through private tears at the downtown movie theater
a film about the war in which he fought,

and through the basalt theater door grandfather,
as a teenage soldier walks, prescient ghost who already knows the
end
of the movie he watches over and over, about a war decades ago

when he saw his friends walk through that solid door.
I’ll put on the jacket he bequeathed me soon, a soldier’s coat,
needing a reason not to leave myself, though there’s no end to
wars.

By Betsy Sholl

My mother, who by the end could barely see,
loved yellow, last color to leave the blind.
Sunlight on daffodils astonished her,
those bright trumpets, little brass mariachis,
as if she sensed their inaudible fanfares —

unheard, like the angel in Wings of Desire
Peter Falk can’t hear or see, but talks to
as he leans at a coffee stand, feels him
yearning for a body, for earth, bleak
as it is in gray thick–walled East Berlin.

As if called to welcome the angel, Falk
praises the taste of coffee, the feel of cold
hands rubbed together in this world of touch
and gravity, where even angels will learn
astonishment. And did I really hear Falk

whisper as he walked past wrecked buildings,
“I wish you were here, Grandma” —
meaning, despite ruin, to be alive is good?
And so my grandchildren flock to mind,
as if they too are creatures come to earth

to be amazed by sparrows, train tracks, bare trees
lit by the sweet tarnish of moonlight. Will they
learn to touch and be touched, let hurt open
a bigger world they don’t yet know they seek? —
as I didn’t know last night on my knees

searching for a dropped pearl earring,
that I would find instead a slip of paper
in my mother’s trail, loopy, backhand slant,
the letters big so she could see them.
My dears, I love you. Years after her death.

By Kathleen Ellis

1
In the end. I was like the others.
A stalker.

I rushed to see your latest films,
as if love could be

handed out in black and white —
fierce but intimate.

Some boyfriends didn’t like you
or didn’t want me to like you:

too much testosterone, too much grunting,
too much scowling.

And sometimes I didn’t watch the action
in fear of losing you.

2
The other day, I found an old poster
for Seven Samurai

where you are naked to the waist,
and your whole body

is coming to the defense of something
or someone you don’t even know.

Or here you are again, traipsing after
the six rogue samurai,

wanting to be like them, wanting to save
the villagers from themselves.

Feral and arrogant, you seize the moment
with your single–edged sword,

while some run toward you, wanting
to save you as your heart gives out.

3
Watching you in the long rains,
my heart, too, fades,

which is why I come back for more —
to stand in your sandals

and resist the bandits, confronting fear.
In the end, you are like all of us.

What we love keeps us coming
back for more.

By Kathleen Ellis

Years ago, I fell in love with a man
in a movie, a man who was a movie.

We rendevouzed every night that spring
to watch our love play out on screen.

When Daunaunt’s film played, the wild
horses splashed and pranced along

the Camargue shores of southern France.
With every bite of the mares’ backs

by the breathtaking stallions, my heart
raced like a wild animal giving herself up

in slow motion, in the dream of fire and water.
How did I rise and fall in only ten minutes?

Now I marvel that I survived at all.