2 September 2003 | Vol. 3, No. 3

Reading the Part

by DENNIS MAHAGIN

I wonder will you

worry much

when your cherry popping daddies stop

handing you all the prized roles like cotton candy

for a spoiled brat cloistered in the carny midway

awning promenade and wailing

when they start to make you work for it that's

when you'll feel me watching from the wings

whispering confidentially with the long tall

elegant theater director lady

and when you look over to where you think

the chatter hum is coming from all you'll see

is a naked dressmaker's dummy

impaled on a tripod—exactly

the shape you left me in, go on baby scroll down

the page, to the part where the paragraph starts

to expand and contract like a cervix under the

speculum scrape and whoosh! you'll start to really

feel my breath on your neck then—hot flash do si do

dyslexic elbow turnabout of the script page tripping you up

in blue fingers of carcinogens and stage fright cold

as the burled wood of a shepherd's crook

slowly wrapping around your neck…

When you look up, alarmed, and ask if you can

try it again, the producers at their panel table will shrug

and mutter amongst themselves—sheepish buffalo confab

in hushed tones…

The one who looks like Brad Pitt will blush, look down

at his watch, and let loose with a dry rattle

fake cough

that is the sound of a chicken roosting,

and it is then that you will hear the single whip-crack

handclap from way up in the nosebleeds

somewhere that won't stop long

after you're shuffling your sweet ass slowly

off the stage—snot-nosed and brow beat

with wonder at what could have possibly

gone wrong.