Drama School

Vincent Hostak

April 6, 2025

O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are

No longer yours than you yourself here live

-Sonnet 13, William Shakespeare

When the professor said: “Learn them by heart,” she did not mean

repeat these words as each felt in one grave moment of the past.

I know that my tongue cannot taste an ancient spider’s catch,

so I do not swallow each prize whole 

only to release them like bubbles from a now dry pool.

They’ve moved since and will move again tomorrow.

Another creature will wriggle into the small pale spaces of

fresh schoolbook pages peeled away from a slice of new wood

or bob between slippery stones, yanked by a stream’s current.

Either way, hold on to your dear life with each word spoken.

Bend, break and rebuild yourself if you must

with each warm collision you make with the unversed air.

The words are fugitives from another century now

and learning to swim in the downstream foam.  

Call them to the bank with a young heart’s cry.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes and produces the podcast: Crossings: the Refugee Experience in America.