-let’s go to the movies. better, the drive-in-

there weren’t many grown men

at the Plaza on South Main

on Saturday afternoons.

but at the low wall
behind the last row

the swinging door read “Men”.

we'd go inside anyway.

the state of the urinals were
what one would expect

in a house such as this.

not a mother in sight to help straighten-up.

whatever could go wrong

had already gone wrong at the Plaza.

the south-end girls

were as frequent there

as the east-side girls were

at the Strand on Pleasant Street.

It’s just that the Strand

was cunningly underhanded,

while the Plaza was an asylum—

a training ground for the absurdities
in extreme juvenilia.

a little later in life while watching

“Psycho” with Bernadette

at the “Westport Drive-In” on Route 6,
the palm of my hand
was where I thought it belonged

when the film split at the fourth
shriek of screams
behind the curtain's waterside
and the towering screen flickered and died.

immediately, the horns began to wail,
demanding a resolution.
first, four or five,
then twenty to thirty or more

and although bernadette was preoccupied

with fending me off, the brake

in the film's momentum caught her off-guard
and the cacophony of the impatient car dwellers
frozen at the precipice of their slopes was enough
to distract her from my advances.

It was only for a moment, before her
defensive fortifications were reestablished.

but it was unlike any moment of frenzy at the Plaza
and certainly unlike any moment at the cunning, sleepy-eyed Strand.

                                               Fall River