David James has published 4 chapbooks and 2 books of poems. His most recent collection, She Dances Like Mussolini, won the 2010 Next Generation Indie book award. His poems have appeared in Iowa Review, Literary Review, and Rattle. Six of his one-act plays have been produced off-off-Broadway in New York and a score more in Massachusetts, Michigan, and California. He teaches writing at Oakland Community College.

INTERVIEW WITH SHAKESPEARE

The plays, I’m sorry, I wrote for the money—

bills to pay, food on the table, drinks to buy.

They kept me busy, a good busy. I could whip one out

in a month or so, though I had days of drought

when my blank verse became too blank and my

plot points made me sound like a one-trick pony.

My favorites were always the sonnets, fourteen lines

of heart poured into words. The plays were pretend,

enjoyable for the most part, a façade I found amusing.

The poems, however, came from someplace deep, confusing

and surprising me. I would look down at my pen

and wonder, is this some god’s doing or mine?

ONCE UPON A TIME

“all I can hear is light”

—   John Glenday

And it comes out of your voice, tiny beams

bright enough for me to make out the walls, the bed,

to barely see the door, half open.

I often wonder if you can see the dreams

moving across my forehead, traveling into my eyes

as I sleep.  Once I tasted something like bread

on your skin, but I never told you, or anyone.

And there are nights when our bodies fall together

and break apart, losing, for a moment, the thread

that keeps us tied to earth, safe below the skies.

David James