13

A holy and subversive anointing
of cinema. Senior citizens

have seized the reins. Traveled back centuries
in search of alternate entertainment.

Otherworldly, sui generis, merch.
Take an old treason told a million times

(now forty-four on film) and roll it
like a heavy stone into The Twilight Zone.

Movie critics crying out loudspeakers
while I’m sprinting through a corn maze:

“You might recall Raising Arizona
is about a childless married couple’s

crazy crime spree!” Waiting for the right moment
to make, or break, the gerontocracy.

14

I waited for the right moment to write
this meta-sonnet sequence. The Rise

and Fall of the Roman Empire as
a recontextualization of

the entire American multiplex
on SSRIs. A petty theater

thesis that soars to literary heights,
sinks at the box office, then disintegrates

into the aesthetic ether of our
cursed country. I think my latest effort

is definitely… metronomic? nerdy?
wordy? worthy of a red tomato?

Tomorrow, the next poem, and tomorrow,
the next poem, and tomorrow, the next.

Learn more about this poem >>>

Matthew Klane has an MA in Poetics from SUNY Buffalo and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His books include Hist (w/ James Belflower, Calamari Archive 2022), Canyons (w/ James Belflower, Flimb Press 2016), Che (Stockport Flats 2013) and B (Stockport Flats 2008). An e-chapbook from Of the Day is online at Delete Press, an e-book My is online at Fence Digital, and a chapbook Poetical Sketches is available from The Magnificent Field. He currently lives and writes in Albany, NY. See: matthewklane.com.