THEATER STAR

David Giannini’s most recently published collections of poetry include AZ TWO (Adastra Press,) a “Featured Book” in the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival; RIM/WAVE in 2012;, and  five chapbooks in 2013, including  INVERSE MIRROR, a collaboration with artist, Judith Koppel; and his full-length book of selected prosepoems, SPAN of THREAD, will be published before the end of this year. His work appears in national and international literary magazines and anthologies.  Awards include:  Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Awards; The Osa and Lee Mays Award For Poetry; an award for prosepoetry from the University of Florida; and a 2009 Finalist Award from the Naugatuck Review. He has been a gravedigger; beekeeper; taught at Williams College, The University of Massachusetts, and Berkshire Community College, as well as preschoolers and high school students, among others; and he worked as a psychiatric case manager for 31 years. He lives among trees in Becket, Massachusetts with his wife, Pam.

 

Real Life

Living constantly in a swarm of crowds creates the star’s fixed-in-place smile, gleam of teeth a type of light, says Porous.  Of course there’s a scrutiny of mirrors, as if through the eye of a needle another eye looking back. No.  More than one.  Certain insects come to mind.  Also their sounds.  Legs rubbing together.  Mandibles.  To be a blatherskite whose palaver stops only when a cadaver.  Some stars begin to resemble, until they become, the one in the last box, the coffin.

 

The Final Act

There are stars on the ceiling in the funeral home watching the sealed caskets beneath them, says Porous. They look for the “burp valve” on each of the gleaming boxes, but see none.  Unseen bodies swell below them.  Some stars worry about Exploding Casket Syndrome, but soon realize that, for ceiling stars, that is silliness redux.  A balloon full of water is not afraid to pop.  Let others below clean up.  No one tells the families.  [Off stage: the sound of a dial spinning this way and that and this, a safe being opened and shut.]

 

Question from a fan:  What is angel wing-pitch?

Their wing-pitch is the angle of the wings compared to the horizontal, the corpse. Quality angels have a wing pitch of 12-14 degrees.  Lesser angels can have a wing pitch as low as 8-10 degrees.  The higher the pitch, the more pressure the angel applies to the air in front of it as it turns and the more air is forced downward.  That is why some lesser quality angels can look like they’re spinning up a storm, but when you stand under them, you cannot feel anything.  The best way to judge is to test the angel in actual use, but, according to Porous, one must first be horizontal.

 

Birth, the Curtain Rises

Is it only an artificial haze sprayed across the sets on what appears to be a stage upon which the future will dance? I feel sought by its wet swirl reaching toward me, says Porous, in this darkened theatre in which I sense an audience of ghosts, a collective past to which I’m present enough to hear its shifts—as the gray, amorphous fingers continue from no visible source—no one yet in the wings. . . .

 

 

more FLASH SUITE Contest

 

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