William Conelly

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The Actors’ Guide

to interactive holidays

Should you not wish to hear me speak
on subject A this gala week,
and greatly would prefer I not
enlarge B past the merest jot,
or skate away with subject C
on thin ice in mixed company,

there’s no point simply keeping score:
Transcribe your likes five days before,
return in three for a rough script
(to which new judgments may be clipped,
if they’re found pertinent, succinct,
and rendered legibly in ink);

then schedule a rehearsal time
for diction, pace and pantomime,
aware that cocktails will expunge
our thoughtful craft with lurch or lunge
and therefore we must party sober—
although that’s scarcely what we go for.

William Conelly is retired from teaching as a dual citizen of the US and UK. A collection of his early verse, Uncontested Grounds, is available from Able Muse Press and Amazon. He resides quietly with his wife of many years in the West Midlands town of Warwick, England.