School Play
By Steven Withrow
Act 2, Scene 2, of R & J’s
The one event we won’t forget—
Well, most of us—post senior year—
O wherefore art thou Romeo—
And the girl who’s playing Juliet
In this clichéd production stays
In character despite the jeers
Of jocks and jokers yards below her.
Those theater-haters, skater-boys,
And drama-queens too cool to act
On stage combine to form a swarm
Of fierce, unfocused locusts noising
Over her whole soliloquy.
And everybody laughs but me
When Romeo—a kid named Norm
Terwilliger, I think—is smacked
Upside the head by a paper plane,
A folded playbill someone threw
With a starting pitcher’s killer aim,
Which turns “I take thee at thy word”
Into a red-cheeked squeak of shame
That’s a tiny fraction less absurd
Than Juliet’s ad-libbed refrain—
O Romeo!—to press on through
The mess until Act 2, Scene 3,
Of Shakespeare’s lovers’ tragedy.
Copyright 2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
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