LAY DOWN ❋ Gabrielle Marceau

When the girl in the tiger suit
crashed her bike and thought of
nothing to do but take a photograph;

the grass was something,
the dirt and cement too,
but the feeling wasn’t much.

And it wasn’t like talking
to you reminded me of anything
but my breath made new sounds
and the film flashed and
somewhere deep under the earth
future films writhed.

An animal wanders
from one side of the screen
to the other – there!

There was something in the trees
that made me think of death,
it shuddered and shushed but
must have eventually gone to sleep.

The girl in tiger grew stripes for real
and turned on us. I felt rumblings
and lay down in the mud – head
dizzy.

The film was about science,
or about god, but definitely about dinosaurs.

The Tiger/Girl disappeared
into the trees and a few dozen yelled
along with the actor’s famous lines.

There!
And your knee was there
next to my shoulder, deep under.

Deep under:
a few worms and roots
something unknown,
three bottles, a folded paper.

Up here it all sounds like breath
to me, the wind and the movie
and it is so warm tonight we could
almost be somewhere else.

Love sometimes feels like falling back,
like fiery sun – red flesh, like thundering death.

But sometimes the sun comes up cold
and clearing and you walk me
to a dinner to drink mimosas.