Robert Cole
Film (Montmartre)
Extras come from brothels
In Pigalle, extras with limp
and engorged pricks.
There is nothing like an extra
From Pigalle, they muster
As silhouettes in the dark.
The all-night girls are waiting
At the carfax with a best boy,
Waiting for a sotto voce kiss,
Brandy breath, the throb
Of traffic, muzzy with a touch
Of liqueur on the tongue.
A votive candle burns for them,
Madonnas arch their backs
For them, coming here to film.
Trenchcoats posing for a shot
Historic histrionics
Won’t count centimes in the dust.
They spoon snow on backs
Of hands and toot
Cocaine to keep awake.
They wish for kebabs to keep warm,
Turkish delight for the sweet tooth,
A skimpy costume blown to cinders,
A scrim from the kleiglights.
An organ grinder enters the confines
And wheels out his tune.
Why are we here at all?
For little pay, payback
Come-to-bed-eyes trace lights to a stopgo.
I wonder from the balcony what
Is going on. I hear a blood curdling
Crowd bonne anne every fifteen minutes.
How many shots does it take?
A week of waiting in the faux snow
Clung around the pipes of Trudaine.
Now comes the culmination,
I wait for the revolution.
Robert Cole was Poet of the Month (December 2000) in the on-line Swedish magazine Serum. His booklets Inheritance (The Mandeville Press) and Cafard (Community of Poet’s Press) are being translated and published in Russian and he’s been invited to Russia to promote the book. His latest chapbook, Dancing Naked to Beethoven, is to be published later this year by Brobdingnagian Times.
He recently read for Kilometer Zero magazine at Bistro des Artistes, St. Michel.
Page(s) 52-53
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