Matinee

By Patrick Pfister (June 2025)

Matinee
–
Through the slats in the balcony blinds,
fluttering in the summer breeze,
run the sunlight shadows of four boys
playing soccer on the patio down below.
–
Somehow the slats, the sun and shadows,
the fluttering blinds so like a screen,
reduce the speed and flurry of the game
—the running, jumping, kicking—reduce
light and flow to slow motion silhouette.
–
Dark as charcoal, the four bodies flicker
as if projected through a whirling fan.
A magic lantern show of grain and dust,
or more ancient yet, vintage footage,
a painting on the wall of a cave.
–
–
–
Island Night
–
We drag a double mattress
out onto a terracotta terrace
overlooking a secluded cove.
–
Far beneath our bare feet
waves splash a rocky shore.
Far above, starlight crackles
across the Milky Way.
–
We cannot sleep, cannot dream,
cannot make love.
–
Faint splash, muted crackle,
breath of air brings a rain
of twirling pine needles,
shaped like wishbones,
down over our bodies.
=
We remain silent as a meteor
shower bursts out of a radiant
in the eastern heavens.
–
Down below, a regal three-master
weighs anchor, unfurls a spinnaker
and glides off into black night,
starlight on its puffed sail.
–
Suspended between sea and sky,
between dolphins and comets,
we cannot speak, cannot move.
=
I turn and look at the look
on my lover’s face.
=
We lie still beneath a spiral galaxy,
still above spiraling blue tides.
=
=
]
Friedrich N.
–
You said this twilight city was formed
by one hundred deep solitudes.
–
Now your dawn palace is up for sale
on a worldwide web possessing
not even one solitude.
–
Palazzo Berlendis features marble floors,
soaring ceilings, frescoed walls,
300 square meters of opulent space
and its very own private chapel.
=-
The home of a homeless man.
A cave of inwardness,
a labyrinth of the heart,
now proclaimed a “nihilist’s dream,”
a property of the week for “philosophy buffs.”
–
You, who said that seeking your home
was what made you homesick.
–
You, who one night not far from here,
cried on a bridge for a song
only you could hear.
–
Now in the deepest solitude,
even deeper than this city or its tears,
you still ask, Is anyone listening?
–
–
–
Anna A.
–
She called these enchanted isles
the land of satin dominoes;
Modigliani’s muse who wanted poetry to do
what Shostakovich had done with sound.
=
Swan neck, bumpy nose,
tall visionary far from Peter’s cold city,
she described Venice rotting with gold.
–
First husband at her honeymoon side;
did her Cassandra eyes see in the wind
his imminent murder by the secret police?
–
Could she see that what was
could not be what was to come?
=
Wounded yet destined to heal others,
she went into exile in her native land,
where she plied the “holy trade”
and shivered in serpentine bread lines
while the imprisoned and tortured dreamed
of whispering bridges and turquoise lagoons.
–
Fifty long years later she returned
to the satin dominoes beyond gulag memory,
a sparkling title like a tiara conferred upon her:
Great Princess of Russian Poetry.
–
Suddenly she saw a gondola–there!
=

Table of Contents

Patrick Pfister is the author of the poetry book, El Camino & Other Travel Poems. His poetry has appeared in SUFI Journal, Gargoyle, Juked and other literary magazines. He is the director of two award-winning documentary films about poetry: The Stone Circle and Poetry, New York. His novels are published by Spuyten Duyvil Press, NY. He lives in Barcelona, Spain.  www.patrickpfister.com

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