AT THE MOVIES

I find bright phone screens hugely distracting in a dark cinema.

I didn't pay money to be distracted by their phones,

So into this sacred, communal modern-day Ephesus am I,
like a lemon heavy and one with its own tartness.

What is to become of me, drowning in this close darkness?
That piercing little window of hand-cupped light
preventing transcendence and oneness with the giant
gods and goddesses on screen, preventing me

from casting off the twist of painful self-awareness
for a petty hour or so, that the screen become radioactive
with love; would that those her gathered as one
in the love of the many, and tear them limb from limb

as a sacrifice to the escapist lie of a dead world hidden
behind retinal screens of ice and shadows.