Ansel Elkins’ “Going to the Movies Alone” that begins by describing different scenes to movies and ends by describing leaving the theater. Elkins uses an immense amount of imagery throughout the entire poem, but my favorite is in the last six lines:
“and I go out the door marked EXIT
and into the winter night, the vast
dark parking lot slick with snow and ice
where my car waits alone under a streetlight.
I clear the frost from my window,
try to unlock the frozen door.”
I enjoy this part the most because everyone who has ever gone to movie can describe the moment when they are leaving a movie theater and realize it is still sunny, rainy, snowy, hot, or cold. It does not matter what kind of movie they just watched, it is still a shock to see that the world kept going while they were entranced in the film. Ansel Elkins does an amazing job of capturing that exact moment.