The Actor* by Alice B. Fogel
It’s not avoidance,
not to transcend. It’s a hallelujah
chorus raising the rafters in a theatre
of all souls.
It’s to let each
make a scene, death-defying, an act
in the wings. Call me a dodo,
I am not
extinct when I fly this coop of earthly bounds.
What you see
is not who I am: It’s to slough a slew
of disparate selves. Don’t you
wish you could die
night after night, and die, and die, and still be
attractive?
It’s an I for an I.
It’s all entrancing and never having
to bow out.
*adapted from “Variation 16: Actor,” from Interval: Poems Based on Bach’s Goldberg Variations