Vincent Price

sons and lovers and little daughters
wearing come-on outfits crowded into the
run down run around movie house
on the downtown square where
orange popsicles went hiding
inside vacant mouths like
tissue inside a nose,
moths inside a flame,
and candy like a distant mountain
with an unclimbed summit,
sat uneaten behind a glass partition.
the Saturday morning matinee
(where i once took a girl who had
a shoulder under her white blouse
and as i placed my head there i
felt the melting snow of her
resistance drip onto my tongue)
was parting a curtain like a woman
might part her legs, slowly.
the girl was Cindy and Vincent
Price tugged at her skirt, blew out the
candle sitting near the sweet center
of her cake, and i sang happy
birthday inside her ear. 25 cents
was the admission, paid to a
fat lady with six chins or an old man
sitting behind the ticket window on
his stool, his eyes heavy on his chest.
each Saturday you never knew
beforehand if it would be the lady
or the man until you arrived
with your money. they both
made change without complaint,
sitting in the pit watching the pendulum
swinging small coins from hand to hand,
their fingers coarsely counting your money.
the large glass doors opened into
the cinema, and walking up the
hall to my seat, Hollywood posters
with colored pictures were hung,
followed me with guns blazing
to make me crazy, because they
were more alive than the lady who
took my ticket, stared hard at me as
she tore it, and handed me a smaller piece
than i handed her. Mr. Price is now dead
and Cindy is gone, as are the Hollywood
posters, rolled up and stored in
an alley basement or burned, as is
the memory of Cindy hiking on a frozen
lake without a soul to support her cold
shoulder, or a fire to warm her feet,
and the movie house is now closed, too.
The vacant space has become a bar, serving
small scoops of ice cream or brief intoxication
for 50 cents and a buck, to all comers
regardless of their nationality, and i
could easily enter sober without buying a ticket.