5 | joy schaefer

they couldn’t even look her in the eyes

 

A mirror reflects the attic. A photo of Ginger Rogers clings to Anne’s bedroom wall. Decades glued her so decisively, maybe as Anne tried to do, the corners of her thin lips pulled high, dark hair hanging in Hollywood tresses. Outside the window green leaves bloom like stagnant canal water. A mirror reflects the attic. A photo of Anne’s statue hangs in the last room. The back of her pedestal is stained with a blood-red swastika. The statue is one block down. The swastika is gone. A mirror reflects the attic. She smiles like the day she found Ginger.

 


waiting for tuesday

 

Cold air leaks through the second-story screen door.
Plastic window shades curve over each other, filtering gray light.
Burnt confetti dangles and speaks baritone in the wind,
alto when gusts blow, silent when stagnant.

Plastic window shades curve over each other, filtering gray light.
Heat pours from the vent and overpowers the wind,
alto when gusts blow, silent when stagnant.
There’s a voice in the black screen.

Heat pours from the vent and overpowers the wind,
infiltrating October air with comfort.
There’s a voice in the black screen
stating the number of Americans that will leave today.

Infiltrating October air with comfort,
pumpkins sit in rows on concrete porches, waiting.
Stating the number of Americans that will leave today,
the voice is steady.

Pumpkins sit in rows on concrete porches, waiting
for the children, who invent new ways of being.
The voice is steady
as it lists the number that have already gone

for the children, who invent new ways of being,
and for those who have never returned or will return.
As it lists the number that have already gone,
we sit, waiting for Tuesday.

And for those who have never returned or will return,
burnt confetti dangles and speaks baritone in the wind.
We sit, waiting for Tuesday.
Cold air leaks through the second-story screen door.

 


joy schaefer is a feminist film scholar based in Brooklyn. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at Stony Brook University, where she designs and teaches courses such as European Cinema: Crossing National Borders. She holds an M.A. in French Studies (NYU) and an Advanced Certificate in Women’s & Gender Studies (SBU). Joy is co-founder of Woman with a Movie Camera (from5to7.com) and her work has been published in The Quarterly Review of Film and Video.