Sometimes I sit at a café window
watching pedestrians pass and I think

all the people in this life I’ll never
know, these strangers in the space

we share, an unseen assistant
director setting up the scene and

critics will leave harsh reviews for lack of
dramatic irony, or subtle comedy, whatever

the previous scene sets up, or seemed to
be leading to, but the longer I move

through its runtime, the more I fear
a lack of coherence, that Chekhov’s

son never grows into what Chekhov
demands– the boy dies a few acts

later, randomly, and still the film marches
on, aiming the lens high toward some plastic

profundity with its pervasive god
and blue sky gazing through a tall

circle of trees, leaves swaying, keyboard
guitar, so frustrating, and later will be an op-ed

from the Production Coordinator that outlines
the sacrifices needed when the rented lens

shattered, dropped from a rooftop, costing a
hundred thousand, and the producers had yelled

about budget cuts yet still wanted an endless
duration, excess cast members extricated with

no follow-up but others too much, your dead
dad referenced with each hailstorm, you grow

tired of the metaphor then sit in the park
watching people pass when a past lover

from act twenty-seven enters stage left
with a pup and you wave, a stunt, restless

limb, in case she asks, which she won’t,
she’ll avoid eye contact because she is

no longer in the contract, can’t say a word
without pay, but still she will

wonder if you are the same actor,
and I’ll have to rewind a long while

to see if you are.

(originally published in A God You Believed In [Pinhole Poetry, 2023])