Moving Pictures
Kate Soules At the movie theater, the clerk for the outside window leaned in with my ticket as he grabbed my hand and whispered in my ear, “I know your father.” The woman behind me in line looked curiously wondering what he and I would whisper about he had only handed me a movie stub. I didn’t recognize the man. He glanced at me knowingly gesturing to the woman move ahead, move ahead. The film was filled with fog, buzzards flying. In the valley I saw my father, listening for his sea in this desert. He lost his water and plenty of salt dried in patterns around his eyes. I waited for explosions for disease or other things my father is known for. He walked dully and his face melted with each step, the hanging mouth an open admission, becoming an actor once again. I listened to the ending monologue about art and the obscurity of love which can’t exist without a phonograph or a well-cut bomber jacket that the actor wore in the final scene, where tears dried in patterns around the lovers’ eyes. I took my ticket stub out of my pocket and recognized my father’s face next to the numbers that pull winners out of a crowd. His cheeks were long and drawn and thin, the actor if he had starved in the valley or lost his jacket. The man gazed back with meager recognition. |
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About the Author: Kate Soules has published poetry and creative nonfiction in the Concho River Review, the Inflectionist Review, the New Poet, Meat for Tea, and the Transnational. She has two poems forthcoming in the Vine Leaves Literary Magazine. She lives in Edgartown, Massachusetts.
