There’s something about your sharing with me
Tears usually are the result
Not sadness as in Ach
But gratitude as in Ah
I’ve known you nine years plus
So, of course, we inter-are
Muriel Ruykeyser: The universe
Is made of stories not atoms
You were a theatre wiz
Sassy smart aleck
Devotee of Boal
Proud hoosier
Companion to the refugee kids
Evoker of their stories
You used theatre to touch them
And so helped them to touch us
You read Mev’s gospel at LBB
Which sealed the deal for you, for me
Mev: Putting our bodies before the wheels of the great machine
That crushes the bones of the poor, blacks, gays, …
For a couple months we meet week after week
At 6 North Coffee on Laclede
You making your jottings in your notebook
Me sharing scenarios, possibilities
You know the theatre of the absurd
Yeah there we were, Lucky and Pozzo
Trying to prepare for that
Which is beyond preparation
Then you performed the play about your alter ago Rachel Corrie
You fucking were Rachel Corrie
Summer 2006
Right before you left for the West Bank
Then you phoned me at some crazy hour
You were about to get on a plane
“Professor-friend, I’m scared shitless”
You admitted as Israel was leveling Lebanon
“What should I do?”
And then you accompanied your fear and soon got a taste
Of some of what the Fayrouzes of the world
Endure as they hold on to their humanity
Zora Neale Hurston: There’s no agony
Like bearing an untold story inside of you
And you transformed your months
Into not just one, but two plays
I’ve long been impressed, relieved, and inspired
By how honest and raw and real you are
Like when you sent me three pages of comments
About Dear Layla
I felt so honored
By you soul-probing reading of it
(Of course you inhabit the characters
Of Carla, Nirmala and Natasha)
Harold Clurman: Theatre is
Propaganda for a better life
One day I promise
I’ll come to New York
Come see you in a performance
Then stay out regaling you till dawn
Today I got your postcard from Harlem
Your spirit and spunk radiated off of it
That’s why I’m writing these lines now in my notebook
Remembering a few flash moments
Of the goosebumped and glorious blessings I’ve known
Courtesy of the Indomitable and Tender Miss Magan Wiles
