Dramatis Personae


I show this poem to my wife
and she says do you have to say
fuck it’s not your style and I say
—to myself—fuck, I’m not going
to show her any more poems, and
—to her—it’s necessary
to the sense of the poem and be-
sides it’s not me it’s my persona.
What’s a persona? She asks.
It’s the voice of the poem, I explain,
the speaker, the someone
who’s saying these things and
I, the poet, declaim them,
like an actor.

Act your age, she says.