poem
Volume 35, Number 3

The Garden of Artaud

We’re never going to save ourselves this way.
The world is always spending. Entropy,
we call it, and it takes priority
around the globe. We have no choice but pay.
The question is the pacing of the play
within the play within the play. Trust me,
crescendos need to build. Act hastily,
we’re lost. But hesitation’s death, you say.
Already at an impasse in the plot,
we have to turn to spectacle. Now what?
A poisoning by ear, a single shot
that shakes the balcony, a razor cut:
the theater of cruelty, where we strut
or stagger toward a bloody spike-taped spot.


—Dan Campion