Matinee

Mark Kraushaar

       I'm not a marriage counselor. I don't know what's going on, and I 

       don't want to know, but I like you. I always liked you. 

                   -- Joel and Ethan Coen, Blood Simple 

He's the one driving, the man, 

 younger than her husband, nicer too. 

 It's grown dark and it's raining. 

 He says he likes her. 

 He says he's always liked her. 

 So, first pausing a little, 

 I didn't know that, she answers, which is when he 

 says it wouldn't make sense to start something new, 

 and which is also the moment we know they'll do just 

 that, start something, now, and next thing, 

 sure enough, they're out of their clothes 

 in some hot-sheet motel off the highway. 

Of course, they're on the big screen 

 and we're in the world, so they wouldn't hear 

 the creepy movie music around them. 

 It spells out how inevitable 

 the future is, theirs no more than 

 anyone's maybe, but this is their story 

 and we're only watching so to take a break 

 from our own. 

 Still, how foolish and doomed the new couple seem. 

 It's something with the last of the light, 

 something in the way it disappears 

 in the trees, almost blue, 

 a kind of an echo.