Being in Plays

Ethics are learned from who you sleep with

the first few times, and theater is sex,

almost. Being in it, I mean, and being young,

with a lot of group undressing

and silence in darkness, chaste

permissions of the cast party,

spiked punch in the recreation room.

I was always cast as Old Man

with tennis-shoe polish for white hair

and lines drawn where my lines now are,

forehead haiku, the eyes' briffits,

and parentheses around the muzzle.

I guess I miss it, achievement's sense,

the way a show's run ends

and everyone knows it together,

a social pain, like the death

of a popular imaginary friend.

When lights between scenes dim,

I like to see actors take props offstage

or team up with stagehands to move

the built elements of our fantasy.

I hope they keep going, and sneak

some of the properties home to mix in

with their private dramas. I pass theaters

the way I pass churches, but like

better this foldable theater

half-constructed in the mind,

sometimes thrown away

along with the day's receipts.

Nothing's lost. I carry my own

props in—red telephone,

bowl of apples—and then with me draw

back into the unseen.

Copyright Credit: Ed Skoog, "Being in Plays" from Run the Red Lights. Copyright © 2016 by Ed Skoog. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: Run the Red Lights (2016)