The Sea Side of the Movies

by Sam Lohmann

The sea side of the movies

lets a scene occur, a bottom,

false or glass, and
––
sifting upward motes. See
the water you rise out of, an untoward
sea-lion that shines.
––
Or the photographer pulls a fake trigger,
diffusing sight up the rigging––frictionlessly.

Shifting the sea-lines
across the earth maps the
kept. Keep saying
––
sea and meaning ocean and eating
nettles, no, kelp, no,
knowledge wind hollows
into the head: first frost,
next frost . . .

Then rain on both sides of the film
of rain, glamour grammar moves
in back of, silvery-purplish, a witch
––
finally slicing into the gown
of all weathermen know. She is moving

obliquely, not undanceable-with
but fearsome, a nuance, nearing the hour
of total slip: the shutter.

This Solominka who appears in your yearbook,
your strawbook, in the stricture of
––
a graven window,
––
when she is no longer a mystery,
could she be televised,
––
sieved gold?

Merely
open up your opera,
––
aperture
of song, flecked
––
indigo, colorado, saffron,
silt-grey, sandusky: a live raw
unintention.



Or ocean, spilt
and reriffled by
gorgeous contingency
calls past the sea-wall, the lifeguard and
the expertly misplaced
towel, buttercup yellow,
to even a nakeder shore, wet sand
of what is left there, teeming––brandished
in sheer choir.

Movie becomes cave, filling with seawater.
––
No not the moon, a bulb, grown
in dirt, tungsten or stuff
the earth does, turning.
––
Mulling occult coils moves
around a round hollow, ringing,
built to ring, a filament.



A filament eased on to become
pictorial snow counter
weighted to that A-frame’s
scalene glow,
overlapping tiles sloped
to avalanche eyes
––
light feathers down: angel
become outright hypotenuse.



This untoward
arrow, deflected,
lights in an eye,
hooking
a finger around
––
(a beautiful black fish,––ocean
serpent)
the snapping iris.

(in Peaches and Bats 1)