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Magnavox Opus

There are extinct arts,
one of them being
the way my grandfather built a library


of movies taped off television,
twelve hundred cassettes’ worth
in generic, yellowing sleeves,

 

their labels faced out,
filled in his cramped hand—
[title (year) running time]—

 

and curated to his convenience—
all three Star Wars movies
on different tapes, pirated

 

from different channels—no regard
for genre—a Capra/Spielberg/
Kurosawa triple-feature—

 

whatever was on that week
according to the saddle-stitched,
finger-blackening listings

 

in the Sunday Post-Dispatch,
movies printed four cells wide
with sparing, one-line synopses—

 

“Hazing horror on sorority row,”
“Western”—
each recording punctuated

 

by the proof
of his watching:
the briefest glimpse 

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of a Coke’s fizzing brim
before the tape cuts out
and cuts back in


on a preview of what was once
the nightly news—then back to
Back to the Future


and his catalog,
the red spiral notebook he kept
within arm’s reach of his recliner


in the wood-paneled basement—
its graphed pages portioned out
in alphabetical sections, a little space


at the end of each for titles yet to air,
every entry with a number
corresponding to a labeled drawer


in one of a dozen cabinets
no longer manufactured
for a format no longer used,


carted out of his split-level home
with the tapes still inside—
leaving just the catalog


with its little list of lasts:
The Last of the Mohicans, The Last
American Hero
, The Last Man on Earth

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[Thanks to Harpur Palate for originally printing this piece.]

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