after the movie, riding elevators
down between three lobby floors:
past the concessions
and the bar which would serve us
these sweet apple cocktails
on Fridays between pictures
when we were 16.
the carpet the same as it was
then, with probably popcorn
rinds we dropped still in place:
why would anyone vacuum
a cinema? people who come
to the movies don’t look at the floor.
and they've cut down the staff and raised
prices for food, but the tickets are still
fairly reasonable. air like
a spare room – I could be breathing
my mother's old coats in a closet.
if you stand at the bottom
and look at the right angle upward
you can see all the way to the top.
— DS MAOLALAI
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent.” His work has been nominated eleven times for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize, and he’s released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)