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.

By Mark Steudel

Back before the movies could talk,
Back when men still mixed with gods,
Just before Ulysses began to wander . . .

Through the seaweed, the camera panned:
Ship’s carcasses upon the seabed,
The skulls of sailors lying there silently:
“This is what mortality amounts to,”
Said the camera, without saying anything.

With a sense of urgency, life was distilled,
Filtered through to essential sensations,
Not quite life, but life in concentration,
Framing our moments
In a sea’s heavy animation.

And what was it exactly that you spied?
Perhaps a slight narrowing
The circle of the observer’s eye,
For the scene, you say, was intimate.
What exactly she said, who could know,

Except, perhaps, herself, who said
“Ulysses, do not go . . .”

But we already knew the taste for action
That can come with a name.

And so as the day finally began to wane
He rode out off the soft–scudded wave.
The stark, tinted screen skipping a little,
Wavering, as it played its last frame.