A Poem by sam sax

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Theatre of the Absurd

if you put a bed on stage
you have a bedroom

if you put a sink & two chairs
you have a kitchen

what if there’s only a child
applying foundation to his pristine face

what do you have then?
when a person’s dead onstage

does the audience burn
the scenery or applaud?

does the lighting designer kill
all the lights? though the words

may be the playwright’s
the framework is the inferno’s

furnace dressed in her paper
paper gown. what if the child

disappears into wings
the curtain rising finds

no one left to applaud
what if the child learns

to dance, what if he can’t
my god, what if he tries to sing?

sam sax is a 2015 NEA Fellow and a Poetry Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers, where he serves as the editor-in-chief of Bat City Review. He’s the author of the chapbooks A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters (Button Poetry, 2014) and sad boy / detective (Winner of the Black Lawrence’s 2014 Black River Chapbook Prize).

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.