Redroom Company » The widest wide shot, by Briohny Doyle

The widest wide shot.Opens on the sick bed
in my heart where you lie
convalescing in red.
The steam
your last breath
passing through blood, tissue:
psychedelic cross section.
Germs on agar.
Dylan fades in.
Then through the skin, POP!Into a room where
an elderly couple
eat TV meals-
fish loaf enemies in slippers.
Optimistic boom mikes
nod languidly between.
Kitchen grease softly fogs the lens.where we stand once more
on damp tar,
fighting about wrist watches.You; shouting that
to avoid skitsophrenia,
it is important to maintain
a linear conception of time
and attach all states of mind
to
the
personal
pronoun.

I; thinking about how
all those old movie stars were
supposed to glow.
Searching for your celluloid halo
in the Elvis Costello yellow light.
Shrinking fast as

apertures open all the way
along the suburban street.
A sudden and meaningful second
glance; a child playing
and, perched on a wire,
a teenage girl who looks
like you would have.
Bored.
Smoking.
Contemplating a life
of ugly firemen,
balding surgeons
and tardy lovers.

Then out again.
Framed ambivalence to potential
break downs, plot twists,
crime scenes,
first kisses,
frost on windows,
falling autumn leaves,
the psychosis of church bells,
analogies about fish or football,
knowledge of history,
architecture
or art.And further still:
Bridge and overpass,
city skyline,
dry fields,
canola,
cows,
1980’s Fords
line dancing across the planes.
The farm where I was born
(Or somewhere just like it).The crumbling edge
of things.
The coast.
The waves.
Eyes in stirrups, expanding
horizons, expecting and otherwise.Until the world is just a shape
and you
and I
not
even
specks.
Unsound-
tracked.
Unedited.
Locked in a frozen tango.
Lacking the holy continuity
of marker boards and out-takes.

Of key lines like;
‘I do not know you tomorrow.’
Waiting forever for the lens
to time-lapse our lives.

Listen to a recording of Briohny Doyle read ‘The widest wide shot’

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