A Techie's View of a Scale Model of the Stage

Short, profuse grey stubble –
television snow, static –
marks the parts that are not,
as if all that goes beyond
this floor, so thoroughly
trodden upon – all that
comes after this scene,
this act,
simply
drops
off.
End programming. Cue
the national anthem.

But
we are young
elitist liberals who say
things like,
“constructing a false proscenium”
and
we strut about our false world,
reveling.

How tiny each reveler
if built to scale.
A quarter of an inch for every foot.

Two wings, one on either side,
too small to lift us away,
No curtain
to protect us, hide us.
But
I know this space,
have known it from twenty feet
(five inches)
above,
from the tool crib
(tools replaced by some sort of stale bread crumb?),
from scraping my knees
on the floor, from getting paint on my pants
(though no artist am I),
and,
of course,
from the drop-off,
from the static,
from the reverb,
from the darkness.

-Clara Walton