Studio Canteen
The cuts and bruises are just makeup, but
the piercings and tattoos are real. Don’t mess
with hungry stars like these you’ve cast, unless
you want to pour salt in the final cut.
You’ve signed them, now you’ve got to bring out what
they’re made of, making sure that you impress
on them how crucial it is they do less.
Just saunter, tell them, never stride or strut.
Of course they’ll do the opposite. Of course
when you don’t call them out they will suppose
they’ve got you cowed. It’s all an act always.
But you don’t need to hear this. You’re the source
of drama on the stage and screen. Keep those
hits coming. Slather on the mayonnaise.
The Epic Mode
Depend on me, the classic heroes cry,
except for those who famously refuse
to fight or, plagued by god or goddess, fly
the field or, owing to fresh wounds, recuse
from further action until they can use
their shield and favorite weapon once again.
Depend on it, the rhapsodes’ voices lose
in tone and volume and conviction when
a prince or prima donna stands down. Then
you may excuse yourself for what you will,
so long as you get back before the men
take up their arms again to maim and kill.
Of course the mode has tender moments, too.
Astyanax, your scene depends on you.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Lear’s howling challenges an actor’s skill
at rendering raw grief. Long life is the
audition for the part; old actors will
enjoy advantages, however stoically
they have behaved when they have been bereaved.
They will have seen and felt and heard enough
to make at least one howl to be believed.
The other two the script demands may scuff
an actor’s reputation past repair.
Yet, even then, an extra lifeline slips
aid to a long career: “Look there, look there!”
by which he indicates Cordelia’s lips.
My cousin, brother, father, friend, King Lear,
rehearsal starts at one, tomorrow, here.
Dan Campion is the author of the poetry books A Playbill for Sunset (2022) and The Mirror Test (2024) and the monograph Peter De Vries and Surrealism (1995) and is a co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (1981; 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2019). Dan’s poetry has appeared previously in Grand Little Things and in many other magazines. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
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