The Lights Go Down at the Angelika

and you press into the dark, imagine

the stranger two rows back, that fragile

chance you’ll forget in the second trailer.

Now it’s quiet, still

this burden of being watcher and screen

and what floats across it–light pouring out

its time and necklines and train wrecks.

What a relief to yield to the EXIT

sign red “I” blinking like a candle.

Soon the enormous figures moving

across rooms, the emphatic narrative

arcs. (There’s the thrum of the subway,

its engine of extras.) Here now

the beginning of trivia tests. Warning puppets

with brown-bag faces and fringy hair.

You’re almost here. But what you want

is the after. How yourself you are now

walking into the night, full moon over Houston Street,

at the bright fruit stand touching the yellow

mums. Here you are: Woman with Cilantro

listening to the rattle of the wrap,

the paper sound paper makes after you

have heard movie paper. Apples are more apples.

Paper more paper. Cilantro, its sweaty green self.