The Gallery Director Poem by Kirby Wright

The skin of the gallery director is soft. But his muscles know the strain of production. He smokes in an alley adjacent to The Minotaur Gallery in Carmel. Fog veils the coast. His smoke rises south of Dolores. Streets here resist numbers—they are defined by landmarks, intersections, corners.

He has retired from Broadway with tastes for rehearsals, hors d’oeuvres, and starving actors. His face is not unlike yesterday’s or the days before. His vision is no longer curtains—SOLD lifts the soul. The goal is contracts, TRWs, payment plans for the middle class.

“I would go back, ” he whispers to his two-foot tall Diana. “I would go back, for the right offer.” She is Goddess of the Hunt. The gallery director rotates the pedestal, spins so her breasts will face the entrance. He once rallied the stage, motivated troupes for opening nights. His passion for directing purposed his bones. “Why didn’t I make it? ” the gallery director asks. “Damn know-it-all playwrights, ” he says shaking his head.

He allows wonder. He opens his stage to the museum stroll of strangers. But the salesman inside suffers. The gallery director knows tourists are killing time, shopping for the least expensive of the expensive art and restaurants, murdering vacations among the Torrey pines. Every afternoon, he sees tickets fluttering on windshields along Ocean Avenue.

His actors? Nudes erupting from blocks of Lucite and bronze. There’s life-size Odysseus. Poseidon blushes. The gallery director checks lighting, rearranges his pantheon in the morning hours. He aims his fan at Theseus On His Knees. Glass and metal bodies bend, twist torsos, spill shadows under the halogen moons.