On Edward Hopper’s ‘Automat’


Removing a single kid leather glove,
she cups the brief heat of a demitasse,
rests without disguising: she is loitering.

Girls don’t choose to idle gloom-time alone;
mothers’ warnings leaden the marrow:
other’s desires wedge in and split like trick ice.

Beyond the fence of floodlight,
fears circle and snarl like Transylvanian wolves.
One can suffer night terrors

fully awake. Sitting in the bright, tiny automat,
she is on a derelict raft, surrounded by a hundred
flares of alligator eyeshine.

Mother night, your Keres are busy scavenging.
Daughter doom and daughter sleep are adamantine
moons satelliting a magnetic body.

Oh, pity the bare-legged, full-cheeked one
protected only by a hat brim and a clutch of coins.
Someone come walk the girl home, see her safely to her door.
 
 
 
video based on this poem by Marc Swoon Bildos Ney

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