After Striking the Set, a Letter to a Director
for Brittney
After the actors have shed their lines, after
the tech crew has struck the set, walking to their cars
in the after-matinee sun, a single overwhelming light
that flattens their dimension, they become
something like shoddy, lesser ghosts, whose sins in walking
the earth are, well, pedestrian: a dropped line, a scene of acting,
a forgotten sound cue, a misplaced prop. The chains
they carry are light, which is why they act and set
and sew, after all, and they wait for the next call, an audition
to take on a new skin, a new animal
to incarnate, a new church to build. These are your lovelies,
the ones you fall in love with, in love against, and they buzz
with the current of their last performance, your final
notes. And it is always a botched job, a wreck of machinery
with applause and roses, with bows and pale reviews, box
totals, costume receipts, and dead audiences. What you
wanted? One ritual, one sanctuary, one prayer, one
silence, and one sparkle and shiver of life and light, or
one human face, masked and amazed.