Fin De Siecle.

AuthorTrudell, Dennis
PositionPoem - Poem

Fin De Siecle There were twenty-three people at the movie theater and all of them were dead. One of the soldiers, a sergeant, thought it would be amusing to switch on the projector. Now humans still moved in two dimensions, in Technicolor; often their faces became huge, occasionally a single mouth and nose, pair of eyes, nearly filling the screen. The face would smile, grimace, speak; reveal doubt or lust, anger, curiosity.... And the people it faced were all dead. The soldiers had come without warning. On the screen a man and woman kissed: in the center aisle a hand jerked this long after death, then was still. Blood had stopped moving. The actress spoke the film's title. A fartlike sound rose briefly from where most people in the long, dim room lay slumped across seat-backs and armrests, across one another --some adults on top of children they tried to protect; some mouths open, some heads shattered; two women gripping hands, two old women severed at the waist by weapons on full automatic. Blood everywhere: on flesh and clothes, shoes, hair, rings, candy, spilled drink, aisle slope and dust under...

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