Small audience
for this matinee.
Movie screen light
like a holy door’s.
Like a blonde girl’s
hair in a sports car.
By the sea, dead
teens do The Frug.
(Radios pick up
ghosts, supposedly.
Mumbling ones.
Mute lamentations.
A camera can pull
soul through the eye.
(Pneuma: That which
is breathed or blown.)
A dog in a scarf
runs past the teens.
Their dance is soft
in the sand, silent.
An umbrella is swept
toward the waves.
A few fruggers
go running after.
Someone points,
not to the sunset,
but to a place where
it can best be seen.
The bonfire flutters.
The dog is asleep.
The lovers all leave.
Ushers in the wings.
Phones start to buzz,
play little melodies.
The theater lights
rise, not as holy.
Justin Runge lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he serves as poetry editor of Parcel. He is the author of two chapbooks, Plainsight (New Michigan Press, 2012) and Hum Decode (Greying Ghost Press, 2014). His work appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, Portland Review, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. He can be found atwww.justinrunge.me.