Appalachian Saturday Matinee 1954
Every Saturday, our cathedral
was the Paramount on Main Street—
the matinee of breathless,
curtain calls between
the newsreel and Betty Boop.
Lightning could do nothing
to match the scorch—those rolled-up
cuffs on Brando’s muscle shirt.
He was like a walk
through a thicket of knives,
a self-possessed swagger I’d follow
all the way to any jungle or frontier.
Even his pea coat flipped the wind,
sent every mother reaching for scissors
to snip that collaring of hair.
If there’d been a sofa, our gaggle
would never have left.
Some of us brimmed to fainting,
midday swoons inspired
by a palm too many of Mike & Ike.
How I died to hop whatever
wheels were catapulting the stars—into love
on a train, a streetcar, the waterfront.
No farewell hankie to dab these eyes!
Every Saturday, our cathedral
was the Paramount on Main Street—
While out the double doors, afternoon spat
& the breakers belched
& the river plunged
& the sky dumped
popcorn buckets of pain.
Eternity was that flicker of the projector,
its cone of light sweeping us in,
before shutting us out.
Apron Strings
He grew restless as a wasp,
her sticklike Adonis,
her homeboy spawn.
One more reedy lope
headed for sea
like a gull on a brining tug.
His magic-touch palm
became beggar’s bowl,
sun-beaned and filled
with a wish.
How she wanted
to follow his light
as fireflies will
but forced herself to still,
a water jar of lotus,
no backwash, no swell.
Closer once
than the heartbeat’s pulse.
Precise as a scar
now overlooked like rain.
All used chalk
and his owed mask off.
Nancy Flynn hails from the anthracite coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania. At an early age, she fell in love with words instead of into a sinkhole or the Susquehanna River. She attended Oberlin College, Cornell University, and has an M.A. in English/Creative Writing from SUNY/Binghamton. Home is now Portland, Oregon.
