MY LIFE AS A HOLLYWOOD SHADE

 

You know me from dubbed voices and body-doubles,

the underwater shots in Thunderball, the mad axe-man

who hacked down a door in The Shining, while Jack

had his hair mussed and the camera rolled

on the door’s blind side. I plunged to the rocks

of Greta’s eyes. I kissed the life out of Marilyn 

off-screen. I massaged Sean Connery’s marble thighs.

 

And that was me in Ghost, squinting from behind

Demi Moore’s waistline for a glimpse of solid form.

In the shadow that slid down the stairway,

in the eyes that batted from the portrait

of the Transylvanian great-aunt, I thickened the plot

from my haunt of disregarded space.

 

I gate-crashed the fade-outs and director’s cuts,

the bit parts from bombed TV pilots wrapped

unseen around a celluloid loop. That blank at ‘second grip’

on the Gone with the Wind credit scroll? You missed it.

The slit on the screen top-left had me tucked in its pocket.

I leave no replays. Even the cut was sewn up.

 

And now as you rise from popcorn, and smooching subsides and bags snap, and lipstick is freshly applied,

you might glance to the projector for my final turn—

a spin of bright dust in a thread of light.