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The source of inspiration for verse drama lies in poetry. What makes the medium challenging compared to prose drama is developing the poetic word so that it contains the dramatic image. 
All of our verse dramatists are poets in their own right. We are pleased to publish some of their poetry for your enjoyment. 

Ken Gaertner, produced plays, Dominica's Smile, Vagrants in Love, Seventeen Hoofbeats. member of Dramatist’s Guild, Ken is  playwright in residence at  Mystic Theatre. Previously he's worked with several theatres in New York City, including Theatre of the  Open Eye, The Actors Institute, American Theatre of Actors, and Salt and Pepper Mime. He is author of Koan Bread  a collection of poems and 
plays and has published short stories and poetry in magazines including Commonweal, America, Confrontation, Poem, and Poet Lore. 
 

DESERT GRIEF  Mary walked slowly,  the sand  the edges of her robe,   her moist eyes,   all silver plated by the moon.  Alone, troubled,  the memory of the cross  tracing wounds upon her pure soul  as the lines of time   had spun webs upon her face.  She sat on the grey rock,  itself like a large tear  on the desolate landscape  and waited for the silence   to announce again  the coming of the Savior.  And then he was there  sitting at her side  and her soul leaped towards him  as a tigress playfully leaps   upon her growing cub.  He stroked her damp cheeks  with that wounded hand  while from the sharp ledges   of the mountains  the burned sins of the world  fell in gray ashes   onto the moonlit sand.      GOD AT BERGDOFF  GOODMAN  Gloves displayed, fingers down,  discreet rows,  material smoothed,  nothing wrinkled, nothing tilted.  The salesman’s sculpted hands   with their buffed nails  rested on the immaculate glass,  his Gucci frames flinging coins   of light  onto the cash register.  He was drumming an interior melody  with his fingers when God walked up   and requested a pair of gloves.  The salesman held, like a broken body,   a grey pair before him.  “Calf skin,” he said,   “Slipping them on is like applying hand cream.”  A barely perceptible intake of breath.  “No”, the skin of nothing,” God replied.  The salesman laid another pair on the counter.  “A wool, a rich, velvety wool,  quite warm,   and perfectly suitable for business wear.”  “Possibly, but what are those?”  “Silk sir”, with a lambs wool lining.  “Exquisite.  Wearing them is like wearing warm air.”  God tried them on.  “They’re fine,” He said,  laying cash on the counter.  “Amazingly comfortable aren’t they?”  “Comfort doesn’t amaze,” God said.  “I’ll ring them up.”  The salesman turned aside to get a sales slip  and when he turned back God was gone.  A woman stood in God’s place.  “I’d like to see a pair of silk gloves”  she said.  “Of course.”  He selected a pair of gold gloves,   and poured them like honey   onto the counter.  She stroked their outside.  “They’re not quite soft enough.  What else do you have?”  He laid a pair of white gloves   before her red lacquered nails.  The fingers were like hoods   about to cover the heads   of red-beaked birds.  “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”  “Would Madam like to try them on?”  “They’re a gift.”  She fished in her purse  and laid money on the counter.  He turned to get the sales slip  and when he turned back she was gone.  A small girl stood in her place.  “Gloves?” he enquired.  “No,” she said, holding two arms up  with puckered stumps at the wrists,  barely wrinkled,   tied tightly like sausages.  “But if you have some socks   I could wear them,” she said.  “Use mine” he said,   removing his shoes,  then his dove grey socks,  with discrete blue fishes on them.  They looked quite smart on her arms.  “Thank you”, she said.  He requested relief  and took himself to the sock department.  A pair, maroon, with falling silver stars,  was the most appealing so he bought them  and wore them on his hands all that day,  and other pairs as distinguished the following days.  They looked quite smart.  It was amazing the way, wearing them,  he punched in credit card numbers.  Never an error.  But never a compliment on his choice of color,  material,  no acknowledgment whatsoever  of the astounding feats of acrobatics   his muffled hands performed.  He arranged display cases,  and,  with his face set in modest detachment,  dressed dummies,  drank coffee from exquisite china.  But his tie seemed to have tightened.  And no loosening of the knot,  or pulling his larynx with his socks  could ease the tension.

MASTER  Master’s dreams   have held their own  against the TV and the telephone.  The paint is peeling   off the window frame;  his dog  is matted, blind, and lame.  Dog  raises his unbrushed, chocolate head,  that’s like a coarse and withered flower,  and sniffs his master’s tousled bed.  Then, resting chin upon his paws,  he blinks and yawns,  and watches long, gray shadows  weave slowly   like the neighbors stalking cat  across his gray horizon.  He dozes,   occasionally lifting his head  and sniffing the odors   that float with ancient ease  across the dry and dusty floors.  But Master will soon leave for work,   muttering, awaking with a jerk,   throwing bare, white legs ( as bones  this dog continually dreams he owns,)  upon the scarred linoleum,   then the dog dish filled,  a walk to the yard,   wagging tail,   as if he feels he’s entering the wild.  On trembling legs   he’ll dump steaming piles,   and piss his claim  with raised arthritic leg   and yellow, weak, and pungent stream.   Master will sit at the kitchen table   smoking a cigarette,  sipping last night’s coffee,   desiring to spit,   and wonder why she left   the brand new slip  in the bottom dresser drawer,   in a heap,  with a package of Trail Mix   on the breast  as though she was a bird   and this her nest  that she’s abandoned now  that spring has abandoned snow.      DANCER  It was rumored  that her feet were not lifted  by fountains of water,  that the spout of her ankles  did not lighten the dark coffee  of board meetings,  that the arch of her foot  did not span the wool  of distant flocks,  nor fill teacups with their   minty heat.  It was told without foundation  that her toes did not form  the borders of flowers,  did not hide all but a quarter  of the moon.  Without foundation it was said that   her heel   wasn’t guilty of the scurrying  of white mice,  that it had stepped upon   it’s own shadow  and now mourned,  while all the time it was balanced   over a pit of compositions  in which lost sheets  were being counted.  If only her feet  would fall like stars,  away from their source,  if only her toes  could penetrate each drop of darkness.  Then the rumors would end!

 
 Sandy McIntosh's collections of poetry include Between Earth and Sky (Marsh Hawk Press), Endless Staircase (Street Press), Earth Works  (Long Island University), Which Way to the Egress? (Garfield Publishers), and Monsters of the Antipodes (Survivors Manual Books). 
He is Managing Editor of Confrontation, a national literary magazine published by Long Island University.   Mystic Theatre will be producing Sandy's poetry in a new dramatic performance: Between Earth and Sky.  
 
 

Admonition (I)  As you enter the room  I rise up and balance on one toe!  It is you who have inspired  this graceful moment.  But it doesn’t mean anything to you.  You are too young and too stupid,  and you’ve never had to struggle  for anything  ever in your life.  “Come on, now,” you shout.  “You’re being silly!  Stop acting like a fairy!”      Vampyre Cameos  The young vampyre   makes homely women beautiful  by his love. He showers them         with gifts.  He dances in weird, fire-lit imagination.  He thanks his good fortune,  but soon becomes empty,  vacant as a swimming pool in autumn.  The vampyre in middle age  makes homely women homelier.  His gifts become cloying: bits of string,  his false teeth...He dances before them,  but his victims retreat. He persists,  but his thoughts wander. His eyes  lose hypnotic power.  The senile vampyre  is captured by homely women  and taken in hand. They mend his dress suit.  They brush his top hat. They stuff  his hollow body with rags and make him dance  the new steps. The vampyre believes his love  has made him young. He longs to wander  back alleys, but his lovers sew him  into a banner which they hang  above the castle door. There he flaps  like a bat every night in the rain,  flaps himself into shreds,  then flaps no more.

My Mother Dreams of her Parrot  A week before her heart attack  my mother dreams of her parrot.  “I had gone away and Pixie was so very sad,” she tells me.  Now in the ICU, after a terrible night of emergencies,  I watch her as she sleeps, lifting her hands,  moving them gently through the air.  She could be dreaming of her parrot again, stroking his head,  scratching his banded feet, his clipped wings  that he’s lifted for her.  Finally, her arms drop to her sides.  “Go on,” she whispers. “Go.”  And Pixie flies away.      New Year’s Morning  After a late party I drive my friend, John,  to the cemetery  where the family graves   are marked with small stones,  I will be buried here, too,  the plot already bought and paid for.  I drive around, futilely.  I’ve been here so many times before.  Why can’t I find it?  Yes, new snow covers the cemetary.  Yes, I’m hung over,  but that’s now excuse.  “You’re pathetic,” says John.  “A man so lost he can’t even find  his own grave.”

 
Barbara Blatner is a playwright, poet and composer.  Her verse play for Epiphany, No Star Shines Sharper, was published by Baker's Plays in 1990, aired repeatedly on National Public Radio stations and acquired by New York's Museum of Television and Radio. Her 13-minute opera about the lives of artists, Clay/Paint/Poetry was presented at the Byrdcliffe Theatre in Woodstock, NY.  Grassy Knoll  was produced in the First Annual Boston Theatre Marathon  and appeared in Baker's Plays anthology of plays selected from that event. Shadow Play received a workshop production in the Cleveland Public Theatre's  New Plays Festival.   
     Barbara's chapbook of poems, The Pope in Space, was published by Intertext Press in 1986; poems, fiction and reviews have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The New York Quarterly, Lift, Apalachee Quarterly, 13th Moon, and others. 
     Ms. Blatner teaches at Yeshiva University.  She received a Doctor of Arts in English from the State University of New York at Albany, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University, and a B.A. in Music from Vassar College.   
 
  

new york/tonight   the smallness of  my life against  death's genius    comforts me,    I surrender, at kitchen table, to my activity:  digging words  onto paper  with pen while husband  sounds bottle against butter dish  deep in refrigerator,  swigs from bottle, smacks lips, a tiny joyful  noise, hums piece of song.  I look up, amazed  at his sweet human sound HOW DO I    get closer to you and not fall under? I write you with my mouth    shoulders and hands       the paragraph is numberless dark text lies between the stars,    planets churn to gloss, shadows lay down on branches    every sophisticated instrument evolves to        out-of-focus the consciousness of this room    bares time to us your breath enumerates you chains of forgetting, silver-    worded with spaces between,       lay across me I come to you forgetting in order to come back             I forget

below the blue helderbergs how beautiful the land in twilight how firm and gray the stones         how private         and forthcoming the trees how the calligraphy of leaves          marks the sky where woods release          two dark swallows how the root secures its ground, knotting over rise and level     and soil discloses                     every scuff and blade how in the marsh, red-wings fall from perch to perch, rustle the stanchion cattails,      and light swoops the standing water as day's shadow shaves across the flank of the mountain         dark-fleeced with trees.             how these things                         are in themselves              like a language         leaf       tree     mountain        sounding through twilight