“Doctor Caliban, Peeping Tom”
The train was crowded with actors
I couldn’t tell the extras from the characters
or who would have a part in the evening show
that plays in every dazzled window
under the umbrella of rain-slick trees
or so it seems
The saturated colors of those TVs
wouldn’t exist if not for me
minder of the Tunnel
my wormhole
a channel
that broadcasts the bric-a-brac of minutes
as if the world were sending postcards to one not in it
Doctor Caliban the sun & the moon are setting the table
Doctor Caliban the sureness of loss has left me unable
to care about anything I have not lost
Doctor C you gotta taste this sauce
Doctor Caliban is it more ghoulish
to be like me a taxidermist
and whistle on my hands to wit to woo
or be an ironist like you?
Ben Gantcher’s collection of poems, Snow Farmer, was a finalist in several book contests. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Slate, Tin House, Guernica and The Brooklyn Rail. His first chapbook, Strings of Math and Custom, was published by Beard of Bees Press. If a Lettuce, his first full-length collection, was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Bright Hill Press contests. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was a resident at Ucross and Omi, and a fellow at LABA. He teaches math, Language Structures and an interdisciplinary writing and visual art studio course at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, NY, where he lives with his wife and three children.