Florida Theatre In The Afternoon Poem by Harold Anderson

As lights go low,
white hair rows fade
like retinal after images.
A projector whirrs
in a preview of coming attractions.
The audience, like emergency room patients,
awaits with expectations -
an anesthetic to escape -
if only temporal,
life's fear of ending credits.

In a preview comes Meg
with wrinkles worn,
mother to a younger cast.
In recent past,
her young lover’s e-mails we read
and sped across America
to glimpse a twenty something, boyish Tom.
Moans escape -
laments to a reflection done by a makeup man.


POP – the eighties resuscitated
like the beat, beat, beat
of a defibrillated heart.
A wannabe-young-again Hugh
hip thrusting for a much younger Drew.
Wosh, wosh, wosh, up close,
in rhythm,
near my feet,
one row down, an oxygen tank.
Two rows over, a cracking face
chats loudly with Drew, Hugh and herself.
Nervous snickers, shuffling feet -
reflexive efforts to escape.

Moments of a Florida afternoon
in theatre dark,
I saw a preview of coming attractions.