Choreography for the Devoured

CONCEPT

This is an imagined correspondence.

It takes place in a speculative world where some of my favorite poets and poetic thinkers exist in rooms of their own. They are beyond time, in a kind of dead letter office for the soul. They cannot see one another. They cannot speak. But they can write.

They are pen pals in the afterlife.

Their letters travel by strange, unseen means. These may take the form of wind, fire, sea, silence, a raven, or a folded page. Each voice responds not to what was, but to what might be heard if grief had a postal system and poetry was the only language allowed.

This is not meant to be biography or imitation. It is a personal dialogue with the echoes they left behind.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

All roles may be performed by one actor or by nine. Each character is shaped by vocal and physical shifts.

Sylvia Plath

Dylan Thomas

e.e. cummings

Franz Kafka

Gertrude Stein

Yoko Ono

Edgar Allan Poe

Czesław Miłosz

SETTING

The play takes place in a surreal dead letter office outside of time. Each poet exists in a separate room that is shaped by the texture and rhythm of their language. Letters move between rooms through unseen delivery systems. These may take the form of wind, fire, scent, paper, or silence.

Transitions between rooms are marked by changes in light and sound. The poets never meet or speak directly. Their only connection is through the letters they send and receive.

SCENE ONE – SYLVIA PLATH’S ROOM

[A white, clinical space under faintly humming fluorescent light. Center stage is a worn wooden desk with a black inkwell, unlit candle, and a wax-sealed envelope.]

[Sylvia Plath sits still, hands resting on the desk. She slowly picks up a pen and begins writing, with effort.]

PLATH

(reading aloud as she writes)

Dylan

I don’t know if time exists here. The sun doesn’t move

The tea goes cold as soon as it’s poured

Still, the poem came

Like a bruise. Like a fever

I think it wants to be finished by someone else

I’ve started it

You do what you need

Don’t be gentle

It doesn’t deserve gentleness

—S

[She folds and seals the letter, placing it at the desk’s edge. A breeze lifts it upward; it vanishes. The candle flickers and goes out.]

PLATH (reciting poem)

"Choreography for the Devoured"

You left

and I ossified in fifth position

a girl mid-spin

jaw wired shut

by your name

I pinned it beneath my tongue

a rosary

a needle

a clenched prayer

The music changed its skin

I kept dancing

inside the molt

Love was a locked room

where I stitched my own curtain

waited barefoot

offering the pale interior

You taught my softness

to vanish like a wound under snow

No stain

No proof

Now grief wears your coat

It walks me to the edge

and curtsies

There is no scream

Only the spine bending

again

again

again

[Light dims to blue. Shadows shift along the walls. Stage right flares briefly with golden light. A clink of glass. A trace of sea air.]

[Lights out.]

[End of Scene One]

SCENE TWO – DYLAN THOMAS’S ROOM

[A smoky, golden-hued bar. Everything feels slightly tilted, as if the world’s had too much to drink. A single stool beside a small counter. One glass. One bottle. One napkin. Light flickers like liquid.]

[Dylan Thomas leans on the counter, scribbling on the napkin with a pencil stub. He pauses, drinks, exhales, and reads aloud.]

THOMAS

(reading aloud)

e.e

I read Sylvia’s poem out loud. Once. Then again

Then I drank

Then I remembered I’m dead

She gave me bones and breathlessness

I’ve wrapped them in blood and song

I know you’ll do stranger things to it than I dare

Carry it

Wound it

Break it with kindness

Yours in ghostlight

Dylan

[He finishes the drink. Folds the napkin, holds it out, then tosses it. Mid-air, it ignites and vanishes. He steps back and faces the audience.]

THOMAS (reciting poem)

She left

and I froze in the hush of her shadow

a boy mid-breath

with his lungs tied shut

by her name

I tongued it like a prayer to fire

a thorn

a red god in my mouth

The music unskinned itself

I danced in the hush

of its bleeding

Love was a chapel

where her silence hung from the rafters

barefoot

blood-warmed

holy

I drank her absence

from a cup carved of sleep

She taught my ache to bloom

like a bruise on morning skin

purple

proud

unsorry

Now grief wears her perfume

It walks me to cliffs

and hums lullabies

into the sea

There is no scream

Only the hymn of the breaking

the bone’s quiet hymn

again

again

Amen

[The golden light dims. The bar begins to dissolve into green mist. From above, paper falls like leaves. Soft chimes bend into laughter.]

[Dylan exits into shadow. The room blurs.]

[End of Scene Two]

SCENE THREE – E.E. CUMMINGS’S ROOM

[A lofted space suggested with ladders, ropes, and suspended frames. Sheets of translucent paper hang on lines above. Handwritten phrases clipped like laundry. A small central platform serves as a writing perch.]

[e.e. cummings, barefoot, stands on a ladder, writing a phrase across a beam with charcoal. He reads it quietly, then turns to address someone unseen.]

CUMMINGS

(reading aloud)

dear franz

this one’s humming now

or maybe that’s me

either way

it’s in pieces

and i made it more so

you know what to do

(or undo)

love

e.e

[He tears a page from his notebook, folds it, and tucks it into a small wall-mounted box. A soft chime. He climbs down, stretches, and faces the audience.]

CUMMINGS (reciting poem)

you left

(i held )

a breath (stitched into fifths)

& your name

like unmusic

a thorncurtsy

bloodtide

quietly

i bowed

(in a shoe of ache)

grief = you

grief ≠ rage

grief just

waits

in your coat

again

(again)

again—

[He crouches, gathers scattered slips of paper, and arranges them like petals. Then climbs back up the ladder and pins a new phrase above without looking.]

[Offstage the slow, mechanical tapping of a typewriter begins. Lights shift cold and gray.]

[End of Scene Three]

SCENE FOUR – FRANZ KAFKA’S ROOM

[A dim gray office. Bare walls. One desk, one metal chair, one typewriter. A desk lamp provides the only light.]

[Franz Kafka sits typing slowly. His movements are mechanical, precise. He pauses, looks forward, then speaks.]

KAFKA

(dictating)

Dear Ms. Stein

This is not a poem

It is an error report

Someone has submitted grief with no timestamp

I have responded with what I believe to be accurate language

Sincerely

F.K.

[He types a final line. Removes the page. Sets it aside. Faces the audience.]

KAFKA (reciting poem)

The subject reports abandonment

There is choreography involved

ritualized

silent

An economy of gestures

bow

curtsy

bleed

continue

Love was not an emotion

It was a system

a series of permissions and denials

granted in a language only the other spoke

She stood still

Not for beauty

but for audit

She carried his name like a forged document

It kept her out of certain rooms

It did not grant access

It was never officially recognized

Grief appears daily

It knocks politely

It sits beside the bed

saying nothing

The subject does not scream

Not from strength

From protocol

Conclusion:

the performance continues

without an audience

(Repeat)

[He files the poem in a drawer. Adjusts the ribbon. The light dims.]

[A hallway appears stage right, projected or suggested by shifting words. Kafka does not move.]

[End of Scene Four]

SCENE FIVE – GERTRUDE STEIN’S ROOM

[A looping hallway. The walls echo with projected phrases that repeat and stutter. Chalk words circle the floor. A single bare bulb swings gently overhead.]

[Gertrude Stein kneels at center, writing on the ground in chalk. She speaks as she writes, cheerful and exact.]

STEIN

Dear Yoko

He sent me a stamped ghost

I taught it how to echo

Here’s what I found

when I danced in the punctuation

G.S.

[She stands. Brushes chalk dust from her hands. Faces the audience.]

STEIN (reciting poem)

A leaving is a left is a lift

A name held is a name hummed is a name eaten

To pin a thing is not to keep a thing

To bleed a shoe is not to walk

What is a room if not a not-room

A love that waits is a wait that does not love

Grief is polite which is to say impolite

It knocks when it is already in

(Again is again is again yes

but again is also never)

Spin the spine

Bend the bend

Dance the landing until the landing lands

The audience is not an audience

The scream is not a scream

It is a syllable caught in a dress

It is a dress made of repetition

It is a choreography of curtsies

for a god who never claps

[She traces a final circle with the chalk. Steps inside it. The projections flicker, then fade.]

[The light swings once more. A white wall appears beyond the hallway, empty and still.]

[End of Scene Five]

SCENE SIX – YOKO ONO’S ROOM

[A white gallery space. Empty walls. A single piano with one broken key sits upstage. A nail is fixed in the center of the back wall. Yoko Ono sits cross-legged on the floor. In her lap is a sheet of translucent paper.]

[She lifts the paper. Studies it in silence. Then begins to speak softly.]

YOKO ONO

Dear Edgar

They gave me something already broken

I didn’t fix it

I watched it breathe

Then I gave it instructions

for how to remember itself

You’re welcome to ignore them

But they are already working

With care

Yoko

[She stands. Walks slowly to the wall. Pins the paper on the nail. Steps back and faces the audience.]

YOKO ONO (reciting poem)

Instruction for a Poem That Has Forgotten Itself

Find a quiet room

Place a single pair of shoes in the center

Sit across from them and imagine the person who wore them

Do not speak

Do not write

Keep imagining until the shoes become your grief

When you begin to cry, leave the room

Lock the door behind you

Do not return

Title the locked room

The Poem

[She sits again on the floor. Folds her hands in her lap. The light slowly fades to blue.]

[A raven’s caw echoes faintly from offstage. The gallery vanishes into darkness.]

[End of Scene Six]

SCENE SEVEN – EDGAR ALLAN POE’S ROOM

[A dark Victorian study. Candelabras. A raven stares from above. Poe sits at a desk, a pair of shoes before him, unlaced.]

POE (bristling, writing carefully)

Sir Miłosz—

What I received was not a poem.

It was absence dressed as art.

But grief, when written correctly,

should rhyme.

I have restored the structure.

I have embalmed it with beauty.

Respectfully,

E.A.P.

[He folds the poem. The raven takes it. A deep chime echoes through the room.]

POE (reciting poem)

"The Curtsy of the Damned"

She stood in lace, a bloodless bride,

In satin grief she could not hide—

Her shoes, like altars, stained the floor,

A silence knocking at the door.

Her name a blade behind the breath,

A vow she kept beyond her death.

She danced, though music would not swell,

Inside a room that rang like hell.

No scream was loosed, no wretched cry,

She bowed, she bled, she did not die.

Each step rehearsed, each landing grim,

A marionette, stripped of its hymn.

They left.

She stayed.

She spun.

She fell.

The stage was set. The world withdrew.

The curtain never closed.

Adieu.

[A slow fall of black feathers from above. The candles flicker out. Silence remains. Lights fade to black.]

[End of Scene Seven]

SCENE EIGHT – CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ’S ROOM

[A bare hillside under gray sky. A bench. A letter rests beside him, opened and folded too many times. Miłosz writes slowly, reverently.]

MIŁOSZ (reading aloud)

Sylvia—

I have read your poem in all its skins.

I cannot return it unchanged.

But I have tried to give it breath again—

not rhythm, not silence, not structure,

but something like a soul.

You’ll know what to do.

In truth,

C.M.

[He places the letter on the wind. A golden hush descends.]

MIŁOSZ (reciting poem)

"Poem, With Breath"

You waited,

still as a child taught not to cry—

not from strength,

from discipline.

The music changed,

and no one told you.

You kept dancing

because you thought it meant something.

You carried his name

like a knife hidden in your mouth—

not to wound,

to hold yourself together.

There is grief.

There is choreography.

There is a stage no one builds for you

but expects you to perform on.

You bowed.

You bled in your shoes.

You smiled when you should have screamed.

And still,

there is no bitterness.

Only a kind of weather

you walk through,

again.

Again.

And a chair left open

in case he returns,

though you know

he won’t.

[A breeze moves across the hillside. The light fades to dusk. The letter lifts once more, vanishing into sky. Lights fade to black.]

[End of Scene Eight]

SCENE NINE – SYLVIA PLATH’S ROOM (RETURN)

[The same white room. The wax has melted. The candle is out. Sylvia holds Miłosz’s letter in her hands.]

PLATH (reading aloud)

What a thing you’ve made of it.

You stretched it.

Split it.

Sang to it.

Some of you bled into it.

Some buried it.

Some refused to speak at all.

And still—

it lives.

Here is what remains.

And what becomes.

[She burns the letters. Then she begins to write. Again.]

PLATH (reciting poem)

"The Rehearsal, Rewritten"

You left—

and I froze mid-breath,

mid-bow,

a girl in fifth position

with your name in my mouth

like a blade dressed as a word.

I waited behind the curtain,

not for you—

but for meaning.

It did not arrive.

Instead:

music I did not choose,

steps I did not choreograph,

a spotlight without warmth.

I danced anyway.

Not beautifully—

but with blood in my shoes

and silence at the edge of each breath.

Love was a room I could not enter

without becoming invisible.

So I stayed in the hallway,

and called that devotion.

Grief was not a scream.

It was a system.

A rehearsal.

A stage with no exit.

A smile sharpened daily,

until it could cut through the ache.

You never came.

And I kept dancing.

again.

again.

again.

Until the music

was mine.

[A final spotlight lingers on her hands as they continue writing. The walls no longer pulse. The room holds still. Lights fade to black.]

[End of Scene Nine]

[END OF PLAY]