THE AUTHOR AS MAN WHO WATCHES SAM GET MURDERED FROM A DARK ALLEY AND PROCEEDS TO HIDE AS HE LISTENS TO MOLLY SCREAM IN GHOST PRINT

          After the film by Jerry Zucker

I was there, among the stench & decay & back alleys—
          beyond the filth of this place. I was waiting to score
from a no-show, & saw the guy come from nowhere—
          some dark street at a distance. I can make it all up
with excuses and inexcusables, but it wouldn’t work
          for this. I watched & watched. I heard her scream, & thought
maybe he wasn’t dead, that the gods, & luck, somehow, saved
          a life that night, & I was witness to it: to heaven, to love,
to the world of screaming & dying lovers. Because
          that’s what we get in the end: the fearlessness, & the fear
of a watcher who feels for his life, & knows he can do it all
          but walk over, after, & offer some condolence, something
to say this will all work out. & we know it will. & we know
          those dark alleys are places we need, we feel, & end with.

Keith Montesano is the author of the poetry collection Ghost Lights (Dream Horse Press, 2010). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quarterly West, Third Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Blackbird, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. He currently lives with his wife in New York, where he is a PhD Candidate in English and creative writing at Binghamton University.