Last Wednesday afternoon’s writing prompt, brought by Sam Owen, was to write in response to an “assumption” listed by Richard Hugo in his essay “Assumptions” from The Triggering Town.

“Assumptions lie behind the work of all writers,” Hugo wrote. He then listed a number of assumptions behind his writing about small towns.

Sam selected the following: “The movie house has been closed for years.”

Ten minutes of writing produced the following unexpurgated works.

Untitled

Sam Owen

Marquee letters have slipped sideways
or have just disappeared.
Coming attractions include
    “ield of reams”
    “haft”
and a coupon for
  “Po cor – buy one get one ree.”
The place is for sale but no buyer
would invest in this street of vacant stores,
uneven sidewalks, unfilled council positions,
used syringes in the gutter.
It would be hard to imagine
a film about escapism where there is no place
to escape to but a derelict theater
film canisters rusting in the balcony,
hardened candy for sale, cheap.

Intermission

Greg Wright

Once upon a time,
I would see 300 films a year
plus what I screened on VHS
and my cast-off Betas.

What would I have done
in a ghosted town like this
with its shuttered marquee
its boarded box office
and its slashed and silent screen?

I assume I would have sunk
into a depression darker
than this abandoned set.
But maybe there is life here
outside sprocketed faux reality
outside my frames of reference
beyond the end of a 20-minute reel.

Maybe the audience here
has simply walked out
in the middle of the show.