Phantasmagoria

That was the summer I played a chimerical bird

at North Vermillion High in Terre Haute.

Mr. Byrne demanded we rehearse

in full costume. He’d punch keys in the wings,

projecting on a screen above the stage

the smoky images of skull and rose,

a loaf of bread, a cracked anvil, a cross.

These symbols, lit by incandescent lamps,

were rear-projected through the concave lens

of an antique magic-lantern. They’d hover over

the cast and would grow or shrink according to

how near or far he held them to the light.

Belching mist, a coughing fog machine

would make the skull appear to whirl beneath

a hunter’s moon obscured by wisps of cloud.

Mr. Byrne would claim these shapes possessed

“Intimations of the numinous.”

He always spouted off like that. To tease him,

we’d fire inane questions: “Is it pronounced

Yates or Yeets?” “What the crap is a raised poop?”

The time I asked if he shampooed his beard,

he called us neophytes and summoned me

to sit with him off-left. He picked his ear.

My cape of foil wings crinkled as I sat.

“Denise,” he said, “It’s all an act, you know,

this tête-à-tête of ours, this pas de deux.”

He wouldn’t look at me. He was so sweaty.

“Okay?” I said, adjusting my plumed hood.

The sophomore playing Forgael slipped and said,

“All’s misery” instead of “mystery”

and Mr. Byrne galumphed onto the stage

asking who among us could tap the will

of antithetical man, who could peel his own

shadow off the floor? His face flushed pink.

“Mr. Byrne?” I said. He looked bemused.

“Denise, thank Christ,” he said. “They’ve finally won—

they’ve managed to usurp complete control.”

As I approached, he touched his face, as if

concealing a disfigurement. I winced—

he’d shaved his eyebrows off and shaved his face,

but left a neckbeard, like the Goshen Amish.

He asked if I could see them. “Them?” I laughed.

I lied and said I could (to humor him)

and asked him what “they” were. He didn’t know—

he’d woken with a headache the day before.

Gulping Tylenols at the bathroom mirror,

he’d seen the thumbnail image of a tree:

black boughs under his skin, like veins of ink,

roots stretching down and burrowing into him.

“It was like,” he said, “a moving tattoo.”

He asked me what I saw. “A tree,” I lied,

“It’s filling with leaves and birds—I think they’re crows—

they’re pecking at your eyes. How do you feel?”

“Hot,” he said, “My brain is pressure-cooking.”

He clutched his balding skull and clawed his scalp.

“Make it stop,” he yelled. I stood there as he swooned.

He staggered toward me, digging at his eyes,

and teetered, trying to regain his balance,

but knocked his skull against an aisle seat

on his way to the floor, collapsing in a heap.

The more I think about this now the more

it seems unreal to me, he seems unreal,

though at the time I must’ve—I don’t know—

played the part of worried confidant.

“I have wronged you utterly,” he said, his voice

deeper, British-sounding. He rolled his R’s.

“I will confess it all, if you’ll allow me.”

“Confess what?” I said. His skin looked loose

as pizza dough. His British voice again:

“Out of the moldering sod, the green fields yielding,

out of the riverbanks bristling with sedge

and withered rushes of my native ground,

out of the tinkling waters beneath the ground,

out of the craggy steep that rose above—”

“Wake up!” I said. I smacked his face again,

jowls trembling like sweaty cherry Jell-O.

I’d had enough. “I’ll get some help,” I said.

As I made for the open main-stage doors,

I could hear him groaning: “Wherever it ends—

in wine-dark waters or thick foliage

of alders creaking like an old man’s bones—

I will find a stone, which I will give to you.”