Nightmare

 

The curtain rises and the house goes dark —

suddenly everything goes wrong. We’re all

naked, our masks hide nothing. When we call

out line! we get silence. We miss our marks,

forget our parts, plead with God. Someone coughs.

The director flails his arms, useless, impotent

to restore the illusion. Scrims

descend at random, the actors go off

script, a stagehand coughs and whispers, I smell

smoke. The players improvise a fan dance

to hide our humiliation. Someone yells

and is shushed, the director starts to rant

about the music, it’s all wrong because

singing is forbidden — it always was.

 

 

© Michael Fleming

Brattleboro, Vermont

August 2020

 

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