Poets’ Corner: “The Drive-In” for Film Fest

28 Aug Poets’ Corner: “The Drive-In” for Film Fest

Editor’s note: Kierstin Bridger, a winner of Telluride Arts’ Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, is a regular contributor  to Telluride Inside… and Out. She is nothing if not arch and, like painter Edward Hopper, a keen observer of our solitude, for better or for worse, always pregnant with possibilities. Kierstin sent the following poem in honor of the upcoming Telluride Film Festival. 

From the Drive-In

I took two photos before I left.

I called the first one MARVEL, the letters

on the big screen, scarlet against troubled sky.

But it was the sign of lightning,

the shadow of rain that grabbed me,

started me walking,

through the clutch of cotton candy heat,

my phone lighting my path, a clean sidewalk

poured last year over this dry dusty field,

scored like salt crackers slid from a box,

like film strip from Persona, grey canvas of Bergman.

Black on white. I move parallel to the screen,

meet the horizon while the storm swells,

an electric moon through drought-resistant branches

and I’m hot, walking, a woman in a black dress.

The heat rises from the sidewalk, meets me

from underneath, the friction, the pace of air,

my legs scissoring over the lines –it stirs me.

When I reach my car parked two blocks over

my phone vibrates in my hand. I see you pulling out

he says. I’m watching you from the fence.

I imagine for a moment it is not my husband

who stayed back with the children but a more

dangerous man following my scent, wanting

my open mouth.