The Dance Hall (For Christopher Barnes) Poem by Sally Evans

The dance hall was closed
and converted to cinemas.
A niche film was showing.
The two gay guys,
the only audience, seated
in one of the numbered auditoriums
along the blank corridor
sloped like forgotten foyers,
decided to jump in their shiny shoes
and dance to the soundtrack,
flamboyantly staging
a new event, unseen, unknown,
unadvertised. They brought the Astoria
fleetingly back to life
from its old, sleeping decades
of glitter and decadence
back here to breath, steps, sighs.

2010 [recorded at Chicago Calling 2011]