New Poetry Project: "The Masquerade"

Atlanta, 1990

The night we almost died,

crushed at a one-hit wonder concert,

comes back to me

when the club announces it’s closing.

An ancient excelsior mill

turned industrial dance hall,

I spent three years mapping

every dark corner, finding secret

places for sex and drugs,

dancing and stomping in a sunken

disco for misdirected youth.

I can’t remember who bought

the tickets for Deee-Lite, maybe Heather,

Tina’s momentary femme fatale,

but we marched up the creaking stairs

to Heaven, oversold and invaded

by suburban yuppies and kids.

The old floor cracked and gave

under unfamiliar weight. 

When Groove is in the Heart began,

I felt my feet leave the floor,

pinned between shoulders,

my glasses slapped into a crush

that inhaled and exhaled like an accordion.

I saw Heather go down, sink

into a sea of shirts and skins.

A year before her breast reduction,

Tina would wear scars across her chest

from being pushed over a barricade.

It was drag queen Jeff, who hated me

for sleeping with his ex, that saved us.

Lifting Heather over his head, clearing

a path as Tina and I found use

for elbows and knees.

The Masquerade – this firetrap

where I cried over boys, overdosed

in the overflowing toilets, gave

secret handshake hand jobs –

is becoming luxury apartments.

The hipsters and transplants

erasing history with their IKEA.

The night we almost died

buried under thick-pile, my map

good for nothing but excelsior.

*Excelsior: soft shavings used for packing fragile goods or stuffing furniture

This poem is the first of eight new works that will appear at Modern Confessional and across social media until the end of the year. Find out more about the New Poetry Project at this link. ©Collin Kelley, 2016