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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.