Putting It Straight

Dan Carpenter

 
The real tragedy wasn’t
That Medea slaughtered her kids
David reduced a good man to a husband problem
Othello let blindness smash his life’s light
 
Mere horrors these were
And we’ve handled them
Wept, sagged, straightened, headed home
Thanking, honoring the storytellers
 
Who surely knew
The more likely outcomes
The sensible decisions
— For children, for virtue, for grudging trust,

For all that consumes and forgets us —

Would seal the exits; make the theater a tomb.

Dan Carpenter has published poetry and fiction in Illuminations, Pearl, Poetry East, Southern Indiana Review, Maize and other journals. A collection of his poems, More Than I Could See, is forthcoming from Restoration Press. He lives in Indianapolis and is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star.

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