The Haunted Picture Palace

They say the cinema is haunted

But maybe it’s just

That the silvered screen retains

An afterimage of fantasy, a glimmer of glamour

A shattering denouement with no audience

Dissipating undramatically into the cinema’s sleeping bones

Replaying strains of string-led refrains

Wilhelm screams repeating again and again

And repeating and repeating and then -

The awful pause before the shockingly final gunshot

Disjointed, fragmented remembrances

Celluloid daydreams that had a plot once

Now roam the empty rows without exposition

Flip the seats and throw popcorn

And they say there are certain seats

Reserved for dearly departed cinephiles

But maybe it’s just the unexpected and  inopportune thrust

Of an antediluvian spring

Or the uncomfortable feeling of being observed

But no one sits in those certain seats

Not for long, at least

Yes, they say the cinema is haunted

But maybe it’s just

A random breeze clinking the lobby chandeliers

Echoes of screen kisses in a never- ending show-and-tell showreel

The faint follow-spots of a hundred usherettes’ torches long since gone out

Or the dome-shouldered outline of

A myriad monsters lumbering from the screen

The magic of the movies made manifest.