The
doorman’s arm
appendaged with the open and close
of the cinema door
as bitter winter took its last
bite
at my heeled
ankles. Wait over there, ma’am, for my
date with tickets had not
arrived yet. The lobby buzzed of
good
tidings and
cheers like each bulb sleeved in chandelier
glass. I peered through the row
of glass doors as the marquee lights
bounced
on shiny
cars turning off 3rd and 18th. You
skimmed the red carpet in
fedora and black-white wingtips.
Wide-
eyed, I gasped
while my twitterpated mind forgot
I’d just met you. Your eyes
took me for a ride as we crossed
red
velvet ropes
and coy convexity of narrow
balcony stairs until
we reached our twin-mating box seats.
House
lights still up,
we shared favorites: “The Christmas Song” and
“O Holy Night.” The show
began: Christmas Carols rang free
in
the hall while
our hearts sang the same pitch, accepting
octaves where the sweetest
melody flows without a rest.
The following is a poem written for my English poetry graduate class. It was based off of a syllabics prompt where we had to construct a poem of eight quintains or five-line stanzas. The syllable count for each quintain is 1, 3, 9, 6, 8, which follows the syllable counts in Marianne Moore’s eight-quintain poem “The Fish.”
Photo taken at the Lyric Theatre December 2018