New content every morning!

French Cinema

for Dorella

In the kitchen, we ate cod with ratatouille and rice for dinner. There was a big salad bowl in the centre of the table beside a jug of water. For dessert you and your family ate a plum tart while I ate a yoghurt with banana. We only ever ate inside when it rained. It was time to make a pot of tea with mint leaves from the garden. We agreed to watch a film together. In the living-room, next to your mother’s piano, we sat to watch the comedy La Grande Vadrouille. The literal translation: The Big Wandering or The Big Stroll, you explained as we snuggled on the plush maroon sofa. There were no English subtitles and the picture quality was fuzzy. Your younger cousin crouched over your parents’ laptop, hoping to remedy the situation. He failed. Never mind. I could see in the corner of my eye, your father looking at his smartphone. He said the title of the film in English: Don’t Look Now…We’re Being Shot At! he stated: the film came out in 1966, in a mixture of French and English. You occasionally translated something you thought important to the story, whispering into my ear. I stroked your thigh as I felt your breath on my tawny, tanned beard. You were dressed in your pyjamas: grey shorts and navy hoody. In the motion picture, the eccentrically moustached British comedian Terry Thomas plays one of three RAF pilots on the run from Nazis in Paris. Two civilians, a prestigious wig-wearing composer and a working-class window-cleaner, bicker incessantly as they help the pilots escape. Voila! your father exclaimed as the credits rolled.

The following day, I noticed a series of gigantic posters on the peer contemplating the cinematic sea. Two of these enormous photographs caught my eye. They showed Louis de Funes and Bourvil (the civilians from the film) visiting the very beach we sauntered along. You tell me they were/are national treasures: much adored by French people for their work in TV, music and film. There were also huge, black and white framed images of Chinese diplomats and Russian astronauts who had once visited Agon Countainville to great jubilation. A sartorially elegant man with a quiffed coiffure and a strong jawline starred in every image. Who is he? You elucidated: Daniel Rouland was a local entrepreneur and film connoisseur that founded the first cinema in the town. A local celebrity from a bygone epoch. What happened to him? His wife’s lover shot him in the chest, apparently. Not long after, his cinemas shut down. We ate pistachio ice-cream, sitting on the soft sand. By mistake, we shot a short video of us kissing. I had wanted to take a photo of us locking lips like movie stars with the sea in the background.

Amy Lowell

With great haste she unwraps the picture she purchased
and studies the moon white face of the geisha girl
demurely sat on the bamboo bench
beneath the cherry blossom tree in vernal bloom.
A lute lies across the elite entertainer’s lap
and a silk fan and an umbrella rest either side of her hips.
She is dressed in a red kimono
and Lowell is bedazzled by the black pansies
that decorate the satin, the silver thread
that embellishes the hem of the sartorial dress.
Turquoise peacocks strut with swagger in the foreground.
There is a cerulean lake conquered by an arch cedar bridge;
a cerise pagoda stands guard in the distance.

Satisfied, the American poet places her painting on her oak desk
and retreats to her lime green chaise lounge by her bookcase.
She reads a slim, vellum bound volume of John Keats’ verse
until she dozes. She vividly reimagines the cockney poet
wistfully sailing to Rome (his lungs savagely shredded to mush
serrated maple leaves proliferated inside his sick lungs).
Tuberculosis had him cough and splutter specks of blood.
Every night he cried: Fanny, the name on his vermilion lips.

Impressions of Pai

for D.A.L.

You are painting the local bamboo bridge,
we can see from where we sit,
with watercolors from your portable kit.

Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists lies
on the table, beside my notebook.
Wet paint dries inside your sketchbook.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Aaron Lembo is an English writer whose work has been published online and in print. His poetry chapbook It’s All Gone Don Juan (2020) is published by erbacce-press. He lives in Thailand and teaches English.

Image generated on DreamStudio