Peter Soucy: Four Micro Essays on Cinema
Photo: J Valente
Four Micro Essays on Cinema
I. Fassbinder
gaze upon the group of people, bartender
gets the cola, orders another beer robotically
reminded that this is not reality, but forced
West German cinema. Clandestine common
interest concerned with commercial films
Americans aloof, but the nation’s Nazi past
followed by reflection, acceptance, and learning
prejudice against working-class shot frames
restaurant-only cars and a cobblestone street
she is ironic because many still use the 1950s
designation slur that had overtones of not
learning from the past while people took
cover under the work ethic, still did not learn
perfectly symmetrical blue-eyed waiter stares
at the rack of homesick, and begins to take off
his clothes. Loneliness: Patricia, gonna throw up
distancing a long line of parallel tables
thinking about what is going on because
there is no facade of jukebox, sound a look
of disapproval, glare-stare with sexual envy
disquietingly forced to share two dances
distancing yourself, strips until he is completely
Brecht for a while, become the racist people
distancing from our days of prejudice, shuts
off the light, hired at The Norton Reader
II. Spielberg
salted navel in the summer
obsessive political film versus
some teenagers drinking naked
dingy’s bell lighting faceless boy
girl’s legs under the boy drunk
his mother watching, this is not
their first time, there is a back rub
he starts to relax, legs devoured
on the Fourth by boats, mayor
looking with his binoculars coerces
the boy poking eyes with mud
yells some panic tips, eats his nose
a popped collar smokes a cigarette
sits looking away from his shoulder
splash, eat what’s erupting from below
cage is a catapult to the audience
into the mouth a rubber bullet
shouts of two men, hand slipping
down deep, legs darting in mouth
the being's face pierces the Oldsmobile
Chappaquiddick embedded in him
because her hands faced backwards
III. Buñuel
right-wing slashed
cymbals master critiquing
religious fanaticism thirty
years as a mirror, sexual drives
to Rome then cough, cough
moan until murmurings
become the central focus
of a mud toilet, lava eruptions
are men in hats kicking a dog
crushing a beetle, men in hats
filing the nails of a dog, kissing
his head, hanging plants
hedge garden symbolizing
drumming apart a pillow
burning a piano player
she walks up to the head
in her hand, some spoons
fondles the face for a month
without food his face asks
if she wants to escape violent
scorpions, an arachnid species
found in various parts of Earth
Rome knocks a cigarette out
the mouth, shoots him again
jostling his body across
the face, she slaps the face
fists him at a higher angle
mirage servants give a toast
followed by some furniture
hymns, saw sawing a chair
a mannequin’s dream
about the cathedral suggests
police who massacred four
bishops getting off their boat
still take off their hats for
right-wing adolescence in Spain
later wished they’d shot four
people only dressed as bishops
IV. Potter
this is true in Europe, where class
systems and inheritance have led
the major countries for centuries
through four-hundred years of
man then a woman, costume design
of a river, a boat lit by press kit
bald man dressed as an old queen
wrinkly crisp in her chambers later
outer garments laid onto her bed
stiff skirt jabs at historical tongue
cheek period a sign of crackling fire
non-diegetic magic spell on Greene
his poetic musings at least twenty feet
away from silver bowl of Greene’s eyes
silver bowl in hand follows a giant bowl
filled with a small amount of clean hair
reflective of fingernails painting shades
his poetic skill tricked a change of sex
female sounding male in the salon
wearing wigs, wide dresses, corset
most have no views of women, continue
technically dead but mostly a women
archduke runs into hedge maze wearing
a small black dress for the first time
fog covered piano chords, one hundred
years passed in the 1990s, white button-up
brown trousers, hair back in a single braid
publicist playing lawyer tells her it took
four-hundred years, but she is a poet
rides an object sometimes seen as masculine
covered up by white tarps electronic with
grassy fields, her mother is crying because
a bald angel with a human face has learned
to see baby powder under a microscope
Peter Soucy holds an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College. His writing has appeared in Solar, Big City Lit, and Works & Days, among others. His debut chapbook was released with Bottlecap Press. He lives and works in Central Massachusetts where he enjoys birding.