Slow Fade to Black

                              for Thomas Cripps

          and in memory of The Lincoln, The Republic
                                         & The Booker T. Theaters,
                                         formerly of U Street, N W.

Like a clothesline of whites
Colored hands couldn’t reach,
a thousand souls crossed
promised air and the screen glowed
like something we were supposed
to respect & fear. Daylight
& Sunday were outside,
waiting to segregate darkness
with prejudices of their own.
A silhouette behind a flashlight
led us down an aisle
into The Shadow World,
rows & rows of runaways
awaiting emancipation.
Theater, belly, cave,
ate what got in.
We half dreamt weightlessness,
salvation, freedom, escape.
A resurrection of arms,
we wished were wings,
reached in & out of greasy buckets
picking something the precise
color & weight of cotton.
Just above heads,
Pam Grier & Richard Roundtree
dodged bullets
and survived falls from as high
as heaven — miracles
not worth building
dreams on. And like an ampersand
between eyes & ears,
the soundtrack strung
together images
the way popcorn butter & soda syrup
held us to earth.

Thomas Sayers Ellis
The Maverick Room
Graywolf Press

Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Sayers Ellis.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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