Props and Wardrobe

 

Cher's coat
in Suspect

Cher's smile
in the same movie
and her doughy eyes.

Nicole Kidman's
naked back
in the opening credits

The wooden box
Peter Fonda gives
to Miss Lilith

(Rapture
is the word
Vincent uses)

The tremor of the couple
sitting on the sofa
in The Age of Innocence

Her dress
her hands
and his eyes
on her neck

Dean Martin's glass
in Rio Bravo

(Dean Martini is
a vodka straight-up
with a cigarette and a match)

The underwear
of Rio Bravo's mysterious woman
all the objects
of Rio Bravo
and all the gestures
found therein

Marlon Brando's
eye scar
and seeing one's soul
as a scar

Eleanor Parker's shine
in The Man
with the Golden Arm
for no reason
other than her shine

Garbo at the end
of Queen Christina
she who had Gustafsson
for last name
and that candid
neutral terror
of those who know
that love is not
where we want it to be

The sweet Jean
again
asking softly
what he knows
of the vertigo
with which Lilith
maddens
the promised paradise
and also hell
already found

Pacino's panic
sitting in Needle Park
all as blue
as a message
from a furious ocean

(There are more shades of blue
in the crystal sets
of memory
framed by
the collapsing present

I even saw some blue
in Red River's
cosmic plain)

Dick Tracy's
yellow overcoat
and also his hat

Angelina's tears
in Beyond Borders
and the method
with which she cries them

(My eyes
as I cross
the rooms of the palace)