“Coming Soon to a Screen Near You” [by Tom Disch]

 

Ingrid Bergman as a nunThe soul has its own entertainment industry

as complex as Hollywood’s, with premieres

scheduled every night of the week.

The papparazzi have been popping their flashbulbs

since before your first erection. Rival producers

vie to cast Ingrid Bergman as the nun

who proved her love for you by teaching you

arithmetic. But ah! it is the cinematographers

who are our secret masters. How can they trick

a string of neurons into a set

so persuasively resembling cities

we have flitted through heedlessly

before there was even VistaVision?

before we could tie our own ties?

And just as with the movies we’ve seen

we forget all these wonderful dramas

almost as fast as we can dream them up!

New names appear in the magazines,

teen idols kill themselves, but the glamor

never dies, the glamor goes on eternally.


February 19, 2008

       

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