Interpreting the Films
Heidy Steidlmayer
Here I am hunched1(缩成一团的) over another
impression of the brain with its wads
of flat batting and weird2 yarn3, thinking how
can I read these films without a light board—
me, foolishly holding each chronic4(慢性的,长期的) image up
against the screen door in the kitchen,
my brain's blank cauliflowers(花椰菜) over and over,
twenty tiny brain images per page, twenty-five
films, brain, brain, brain—and there
in the center, what everyone is talking about
(itself looking like nothing to talk about),
a shape like one of my daughter's plastic blocks
stuck in the thick of it all, wedged right in the fat
bulb(电灯泡,嫩茎) of breathing and bath time and bringing
in the weekend groceries and so I wake
at two A.M. with my films pressed to the side
of a fish that turns in an instant and is gone.