Lauren Schmidt
Foreign
Film & American Jane This room is a hot mouth heaving
Spanish. A burst of breath, the letter ‘J’ as pronounced in Spanish. This room speaks to
you because you speak Spanish, and to
the actors on screen because they do too. I’m the only one in this room that doesn’t speak Spanish, stranded on the wrong side of a Speakeasy entry.
Only on my toes do my fingers
reach the rectangle eye-slide till the leading lady breathing Spanish
behind the door snaps it shut, clips the music of the room the
way the ‘N’ anchors the ‘A’- with-a-line-over-it strum of my
name because some ‘E’s are silent. And I know something about that in this room where vowels unload their music. The movie screen rumbles with that woman and her man, randy
with something best said in Spanish. I would be sexier if I were written in Spanish, not the blocked font of subtitles
stamped into the screen you don’t need to understand what is being said. Neither do I
because when I look at you, your
voice enters me and this room translates each word as they take shape in my mouth. Between
us, a fluent breath flowers, vowels
unleash into the dark screen of sky like stars, a Braille I reach for with ecstatic fingers.
Lauren
Schmidt’s work may be found or is forthcoming in New
York Quarterly, Rattle, Nimrod, Fifth
Wednesday Journal, and others. Her poems have been selected as
finalists for the 2008 and 2009 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2009 Pablo Neruda Prize
for Poetry. Originally a New Jersey
native, Lauren lives and teaches high school English and Art History in Eugene,
Oregon. |
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