Interpreting the Films

Interpreting the Films
Heidy Steidlmayer

Here I am hunched¹（缩成一团的） over another
 impression of the brain with its wads
 of flat batting and weird² yarn³, thinking how
 can I read these films without a light board—
 me, foolishly holding each chronic⁴（慢性的，长期的） image up
 against the screen door in the kitchen,
 my brain's blank cauliflowers（花椰菜） over and over,
 twenty tiny brain images per page, twenty-five
 films, brain, brain, brain—and there
 in the center, what everyone is talking about
 (itself looking like nothing to talk about),
 a shape like one of my daughter's plastic blocks
 stuck in the thick of it all, wedged right in the fat 
 bulb（电灯泡，嫩茎） of breathing and bath time and bringing
 in the weekend groceries and so I wake
 at two A.M. with my films pressed to the side
 of a fish that turns in an instant and is gone.