Le cinéaste by Lee Nash

Lee Nash lives in France and freelances as an editor and proofreader. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online journals in the UK, the US and France, including Ambit, Angle, Ink Sweat and Tears, Mezzo Cammin, Orbis, Poetry Salzburg Review, Presence, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, The Interpreter’s House, The Lake and The World Haiku Review. You can find a selection of Lee’s poems on her website: leenashpoetry.com.

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Le cinéaste by Lee Nash

My number’s in an iPhone
next to a straw pillow
on a massively hard bed
next to a bedside table
that holds an inch of vodka
in a bottle bought from Helsinki Airport lounge,
beside a packet of Chinese herbs
and a ridiculously thick paperback;
in a hotel in a province
the name of which I can’t pronounce
where the food is nitrate hot
and its morsels unidentifiable;
behind the table, a window;
outside the light has faded
and if the crew hadn’t all clocked off
they could create their own,
and there on that phone is logged
the duration of our dialogue
which went something like,
Do you want to fall in love?
and that Cage is not an asshole
and that in the morning
you’ll have to fire the producer
despite your jetlagged head,
and here it is on my phone too,
just a basic device
in an unpretentious living space
in a totally undramatic life
despite the fact that
I’m a cast of thousands.