by Merril Asp
Hamlet,
in his unseen free time,
spends moments elsewhere
from Elsinore.
Actors have it
almost right
when they finish a scene
and hang up their roles
to sit bowlegged
on prop furniture,
smoking.
In fact,
the man holding the bowler hat
does have a cigar in his other hand.
He sits in the corner of a fictional pub
and laughs loud and long
as he tells of the fellow
who plays him onstage
waiting for Godot.
For their own entertainment,
these people watch
—transfixed—
movie screens.
Tonight, the eclectic crowd
will view a nameless
nonfictional couple
bathed in night.
As the show begins,
they hear the soft sound
of fingertips
running through straight hair
over
and over,
and over,
and over,
washing like waves
in a private ocean.
Merril Asp hails from Carson City, Nevada. He is in his last year of studying physics at BYU and can be found late at night reading short-story anthologies or treatises on vector calculus.
