The Last Ever Ventriloquist Poem

posted Feb 24, 2009

for Charles Simic

He hated those openings so much
he usually sat slumped in his dressing room

throwing his voice at the black sock called Beast
while a red light forewarned him of the hour;

once out on stage, he’d drink long from a glass
listening to its whiskey-warmed voice—

you know that the dead can get away with most everything
and then afterwards, wash his hands like a surgeon,

each of the circles canceling out an old memory,
bringing him closer to completion, some finale.

For what he couldn’t quite see had always confounded him—
unlike the woman in front, half-smothered with furs, proclaiming

I know that it isn’t alive but I still know it’s evil, unnatural.
But he’d always bring himself back to life for another run

where he’d squint half the audience into torrents of light
before bringing the other half down with his fist.

Mark DeCarteret is the co-editor of Under the Legislature of Stars. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including AGNI, Quick Fiction, Salt Hill, and 3rd bed, as well as the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation, Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 and Under the Legislature of Stars.