The Cast

The Cast
BY CAROL LYNN PEARSON

I lost the starring part in Our Town
To Linda, a girl not half as good as me,
Who kept her eyes down
For the whole tryout, and even stuttered.

When the cast was posted
And the high school drama coach
Saw me reading it through my tears,
He put an arm around me and said,
“Now, look—things are not always as they appear.
This is not Broadway;
It’s an educational institution.
We’re here for two reasons—to put on a show,
And, more important, to help people grow.
Someday you’ll see.”

So Linda played Emily,
And she didn’t even stutter.
And I was Third Woman at the Wedding,
Watching and wondering how he knew
What she could really do
If she had the chance.

Since then I have guessed that God,
Being a whole lot smarter
Than my high school drama coach, might be offstage sometimes
With an arm around a questioning cast:
“Now, don’t try to outguess me.
Sometimes the first shall be last
And the last shall be first,
And I’ve got my own reasons.
I need some strong ones to star
And some strong ones to stand back.
And I’m going to put out front
Some you might not choose,
But you’ll see what they can really do
When they have the chance.
Mortality is an educational institution.
We’ve got to put on the show,
And, too, we’ve got to help people grow.”

As I walk through the scenes,
Watch the costumes move,
And listen to the lines
Of the powerful, the weak,
The rich, the poor,
I look at the leads with less awe than most,
And at the spear-carriers with more.

She Didn't Mean to Do It

Daisy Fried

Here's a short poem with a haunting refrain.


Oh, she was sad, oh, she was sad.
She didn't mean to do it.

Certain thrills stay tucked in your limbs,
go no further than your fingers, move your legs through their paces,
but no more. Certain thrills knock you flat
on your sheets on your bed in your room and you fade
and they fade. You falter and they're gone, gone, gone.
Certain thrills puff off you like smoke rings,
some like bell rings growing out, out, turning
brass, steel, gold, till the whole world's filled
with the gonging of your thrills.

But oh, she was sad, she was just sad, sad,
and she didn't mean to do it.

from She Didn't Mean to Do It, 2000
University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Who Understands Me But Me

Jimmy Santiago Baca


They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine,
they lock my cage, so I live without going anywhere,
they take each last tear I have, I live without tears,
they take my heart and rip it open, I live without heart,
they take my life and crush it, so I live without a future,
they say I am beastly and fiendish, so I have no friends,
they stop up each hope, so I have no passage out of hell,
they give me pain, so I live with pain,
they give me hate, so I live with my hate,
they have changed me, and I am not the same man,
they give me no shower, so I live with my smell,
they separate me from my brothers, so I live without brothers,
who understands me when I say this is beautiful?
who understands me when I say I have found other freedoms?

I cannot fly or make something appear in my hand,
I cannot make the heavens open or the earth tremble,
I can live with myself, and I am amazed at myself, my love, my beauty,
I am taken by my failures, astounded by my fears,
I am stubborn and childish,
in the midst of this wreckage of life they incurred,
I practice being myself,
and I have found parts of myself never dreamed of by me,
they were goaded out from under rocks in my heart
when the walls were built higher,
when the water was turned off and the windows painted black.
I followed these signs
like an old tracker and followed the tracks deep into myself
followed the blood-spotted path,
deeper into dangerous regions, and found so many parts of myself,
who taught me water is not everything,
and gave me new eyes to see through walls,
and when they spoke, sunlight came out of their mouths,
and I was laughing at me with them,
we laughed like children and made pacts to always be loyal,
who understands me when I say this is beautiful?

It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers

Margaret Atwood


While I was building neat
castles in the sandbox,
the hasty pits were
filling with bulldozed corpses

and as I walked to the school
washed and combed, my feet
stepping on the cracks in the cement
detonated red bombs.

Now I am grownup
and literate, and I sit in my chair
as quietly as a fuse

and the jungles are flaming, the under-
brush is charged with soldiers,
the names on the difficult
maps go up in smoke.

I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical
toys, my body
is a deadly gadget,
I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
my good intentions are completely lethal.

Even my
passive eyes transmute
everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself

Each time I hit a key
on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees

another village explodes.

Central School

Jay S. Paul


From the bus garage beside the river, where motors
idle like the middle of stories, the road
labors uphill to street signs, the faces growing.

You stand in headlights, climb into the certainty
of acceleration, stagger between the lines of jokes,
You want a small place at the end of a seat,
hoping not to be noticed, not to weep when your shoe
flies from shout to shout and against a window.

Leaving the houses to speed along fence, the road
brakes into daily screams at the steep bank, the turn
above the invisible pasture. You name
each day by the wrong they do, reciting
days all day till counting loses count. One year

the shoe they hand is small. They hand it to you.