Andrew Periale
In Media Res
In the middle of the sky, a boy’s dream glistens.
I turn the radio off and trip over the silence.
The sun up, Tuscans light their stoves and begin baking.
I begin to hum cautiously, never quite hitting the note.
Alone with a snake in a tree, I’m playing the roles of Adam and Eve.
The next thing I know I’m being chased by an actor: Exit stage right!
There’s a villain with a bottle of sake (and me, arm wrestling with my sobriety).
As you know, some of the booze is once again legal
so, as an outlaw, I drink only despair, disappointment –
whatever is unwanted by the hoi polloi, cast-off.
Andrew Periale is an Emmy-nominated artist, and has toured throughout the US as actor and puppeteer. He’s been the editor of Puppetry International magazine for 35 years, and has written plays that have been performed around the country. His poetry has appeared in Light Quarterly, Yellow Medicine Review, Entelechy International, Burnt Bridge, and others, as well as in numerous anthologies. A long-time member of City Hall Poets (Portsmouth, NH), he also served for four years as the Poet Laureate of Rochester, NH. He currently tours solo with “Mano-a-Monolog,” and “Forman Brown, New Hampshire’s Forgotten Poet.”