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HE REMEMBERS WHERE HE WAS
by Wendy Carlisle
copyright © 2001



Ludlow Press Poetry

He Remembers Where He Was

After the ushers found him in the dim
mouth of the theatre, led him out into
the pungent breath of the lobby,
they began to speak. He angled his body
to catch the impossible words—airplane,
paper, downpour—above the concessionary hum.
Outside in ninty degrees, his scene goes
white. Overexposed, his ears buzz.

Minutes ago he was in the dark, blind
as a cave fish, thinking of nothing,
of the hulls of popcorn between his teeth.
Now, the afternoon, with it’s long, smokeless breeze—
is no different than any low-budget film
that ends in exile, a hero out-of-town and alone.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle has poems currently in and 2River View and upcoming in Cider Press Review and Pig Iron Malt and The Pedestal.  Her first book, Reading Berryman to the Dog, was published in December, 2000 by Jacaranda Press. She, her husband David, and the dog live in East Texas. E-Mail: carlisle@vidnet.net

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