Improv, by Jacqueline Berger
Posted on September 3, 2019
Improv
by Jacqueline Berger
When the other actor tried to brush my hair,
gesture of forgiveness the scene
seemed to call for, I recoiled.
Hair like mine does’t get brushed
but scrunched wet, with product.
I wouldn’t have cared about the halo of frizz
but I was going straight after class
to visit my ex. I’d mailed back his key
weeks before, so I would have to ring
the bell, stand on the porch and wait.
No, I’d thrown it in the gutter
at the end of his block.
Did I hope someone would find it
and try every door on the off chance
that one would open? And when
they tried his and it did,
what would I want them to steal?
Not the table at which I sat
Sunday mornings eating pancakes-
thin men make stacks of them,
thus giving you permission
to drag the knife through the butter,
pour syrup in a thick stream
and lower your head as though the clean
face of the plate were a destination.
Certainly not the chair, nor the rug
on which when we didn’t make it to bed
we lay; don’t take the bed, raft of heaven
floating in the cupped palms of clouds.
So when my scene-mate came towards me
with the brush, I had no choice
but to smack it out of her hand.
It sailed across the stage,
forgiveness denied, while I on hands
and knees wagged my head no
until our time was up.
From:
The Halcyone Literary Review
Volume 1 * Number 1 * Summer 2018
Bio Jacqueline Berger:
Jacqueline Berger’s fourth book, The Day You Miss Your Exit, was published by Broadstone Press last month. Previous books include The Gift That Arrives Broken, winner of the 2010 Autumn House Poetry Prize, and Things That Burn, selected by Mark Strand as the 2004 winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize.
Her poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac. Individual poems have been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Iowa Review, American Poetry: The Next Generation, On The Verge, Old Dominion Review, Rhino, River Styx, and Nimrod. She directed the Master of Arts in English program at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California and lives in San Francisco.