What Rough Beast | Poem for June 18, 2018

Michele Stepto
Scenes from the Poem and the News 3

The poem enters carrying
a basket of heads

The audience cranes
its neck to see

Heads the poem says
and tips the basket

so the audience can see
better and heads

begin to bounce
off the edge of the stage

and into the seats
like big balls

In the audience some
giggle in their palms

some have brains
and blood on their clothes

unspotted the poem
sets the basket down

and makes its exit
stage left

 

 

Michele Stepto (with her son Gabriel) is the translator of Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World (Beacon Press, 1997), from the original Spanish by Catalina de Erauso. Her work has appeared in Verse-Virtual, Ekphrastic Review, NatureWriting, Mirror Dance, Lacuna Journal, and One Sentence Poems. 

SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.