Isaac Cates

From the Projection Booth

I'm halfway through a screening of Rear Window
when I see it: Jimmy Stewart is a liar.
He doesn't really love Grace Kelly. Her allure--
incredible allure--is wasted on him. And I wonder:

what else are they pretending? Shadows on a screen
standing for bodies lousy orange effect
for blindness in the flash--all faked, in fact:
his cast from wardrobe, her negligee like spun saccharine,

repartee, continuity, the neighbors plot. It has to happen,
as I watch the pretty couple watching
the opposite windows together, wishing,
their broken inferences were true: finally I'm hoping

their house lights will never rise, no curtain
fall velvet over silver, the hero never move his
wrecked legs to roust me from the movie-house
blinking at a world bright, dull, and certain.

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     Isaac Cates is a Ph.D. student in English at Yale University who recently took a year's leave to study poetry at Johns Hopkins. Other products of that year are forthcoming in The Southwest Review.

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