Elegy for a Hollywood Playhouse

/ Issue 15.1 /

Even the fire that brought down the dingy theater
was set by amateurs, itself was amateurish,
as if the scenery it gnawed just couldn’t nourish
a five-alarmer. The 240-seater
slid ever farther from respect each passing year,
all without notice from the local drama desks.
Here podunk Duses bottomed out in bad burlesque,
bug-bitten socialites realized their family’s fears.
Now, charred and cratered, it at last takes on
some of the grandeur of an odeon.

Boris Dralyuk

Boris Dralyuk

Boris Dralyuk is the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books and translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and other authors. His poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Hudson Review, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, and elsewhere. His collection My Hollywood and Other Poems was released by Paul Dry Books in 2022.
Boris Dralyuk

Also by Boris Dralyuk (see all)

Author: Boris Dralyuk

Boris Dralyuk is the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books and translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Maxim Osipov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, and other authors. His poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Hudson Review, The Hopkins Review, The New Criterion, and elsewhere. His collection My Hollywood and Other Poems was released by Paul Dry Books in 2022.