SATURDAY MATINEE, 1954

Each week, I trekked from Forest City
to The Meadowbrook: up Oakfield Avenue

past Lily Canale’s place next to the radio tower:
past the gas station at the corner of North Jerusalem

and, further north, the deli, cleaner’s, shoe repair, luncheonette
hunched at a bend in the road: past the Carvel’s

that seemed to have fallen from the sky onto Hempstead Turnpike
and the red-and-white icecream parlor that floated on the planet

like an ark—I rushed past them all to where a small temple
rose out of glass and concrete.

Such hymns to cowboy courage were sung in there! Such psalms
to love and war! In that almost virgin country I saw each Saturday,

a horse thief could be elected judge—even president—
and the massacre of Comanches by our cavalry was reason enough

to crow. In that 50s version of suburban childhood, sex
was still distant and mysterious—a trickling brook that babbled

in a hidden grove—but then the house lights dimmed,
the staticky speakers warmed, a popcorn incense wafted

from the balcony, and the holy screen was unveiled. Darkness
would enter then and do battle, and the theater would lift a little

in that turbulence. There was no priest but the projectionist,
his one good sermon delivered, sotto voce,

in pale blue smoke that pulsed like rays from a star.