Bernadette Mayer, from VERSE

from the new issue of Verse (Volume 26, Numbers 1-3)

Bernadette Mayer

CINEMA ALLEY

the sun is on the born-again paper
my name is still Bernadette Mayer
just as Spanish people have Irish names
as in “enter: Grace Murphy of Cordoba”

you’d shoot the beginning of the movie
in a bowling alley, setting the scene
middle supermarket, the development of love
the end a bakery window, pastries & reflections

critics would say “this movie’s a sonnet”
but unbeknownst to them a sestina’s structure
would lie beneath & airplanes fly by
whenever one of the end-words is said

     a secret cult classic
     the envy of every cinema buff