Words written during a Very Important Intermission:
Every year I attend the 1001 Nights show in Lexington, KY. It was yesterday if you didn’t know, and there’s no other show quite like it in Kentucky.
Last year I wrote some poetry while waiting for the show to start, including “Ray Bradbury and the Country Boy.”
This year I wrote during the intermission and, god help me, during the show itself.
Here’s what some of it looked like:
“Wait, who hired the fog machine?”
The lady passers by.
“You go girl.”
But she is already in character.
Tunisian princess.
Timbuktu en tableau.
“Put your phones down.”
But they still photograph, cellophone film.
We work hard not to watch…
I wait for her to leap like she looks like
She might.
If upstage is a powerful placement,
leaping from the stage is ultimate
abuse of that power.