Isabelle Huppert in a peep show booth
with the wilted bloom of a used Kleenex,
and not her Kleenex, une mouchoir étrange—
this is not a promising get-go.
But can’t my hopes be phototropic
as I sit in the front row with my head cocked back
like a newly fractured dicotyledonous bean
uncurling on its sprout?
The popcorn here is not just bad—
for years the hopper has accrued its crud
so that sometimes you crunch down on what
tastes like a greasy tractor bolt
and are transported to a former Soviet republic
instead of some seedy part of Paris.
You have to swipe the burned nib off your lips
before scuffing it back, toward the lovers who’ve come
to make out in this habitat, upholstered
in the velvet mode of tongues. And when
I turn to see if they’ve noticed
their ankles’ being pinged by my scorched old maids
all the hardware bolted in their faces
glints like moonlight on the road after the crash is cleared away,
as the projector beam keeps on doggedly charging
through a googolplex of twitching motes.
Giving us Isabelle unclothed again,
Isabelle in the tones of the wood of a cello,
Isabelle if you’re trying to save us now
all your skin is not enough.