Something Theatrical

by Suzan Abrams

I am a penguin, a clown, a joker, a skeleton and a blue whale dressed in moondust, all at once.

my distrust

I am indebted to the fallacy of disbelief, where suspicion crowns my giddy head with an Eden thorn and so, I must take my leave at noon, for a swoon so soon - and with dignified huff, while scraping away at the scales of my mermaid skin and riding the crest of an ocean wave that slid down from somewhere in the spying moon.


my last card

I am an illusion after the fact,
always you were seeing, now finally unseeing,
and by the time, my shadow spirits away into the sly dusk
I would have committed the perfect crime
of having outstayed the prime of my time.


my heartbreak

And then your eyes popped out unexpectedly from your beautiful face
and lay at my feet, gazing up at me, they looked like wires mangled
in a sphere of darkness, from where I stood, a lantern to your
sorrowed blindness, a charcoal maze of broken kisses.

my hope

I hide and sigh sadly, in the state of your plastered mind.
Will you see me?
I must ask again in a 100 years.
Remind me where we sit holding hands to the last supper in eternity.
And neither saying a word.

my escape

And now like a mad woman, I run. I scream and fall but I do the noble thing of never looking back. I run to the light in the blighted night. Yes, there is light even in the hagridden face of the cold, expansive night.