waits for the parents To notice; they do and beat on him until he opens his case and gives them each a poem; there are not enough and he takes out pads of yellow paper and squats at their feet, writing more poems that are snatched away. The first readers are finished and rip the poems into flakes that settle about him like moths; they want more, and he writes them While their daughters take turns putting their fingers in his mouth, their bodies writhing in ecstasy as they feel the movement of letters closing into words. The one on our right is tuxedoed; the other is wrapped in a sling of burlap, pinned low at the hip; both are bald, neither is tanned, though summer is just over; most certainly they are brothers. On a stretch of bamboo, some well-used paraphernalia: a two-foot run of garden hose, a larger cut of steel rod, the antique thumbscrew seen in the advertisements, & a helmet, its iron straps crossing like the weave of a basket. At the back wall of the stage, hung in black scrims, are four shapes; nothing is said of them, but we do learn from the diapered twin that the brother is mute; we respond with applause, & the mute bows, extending his hand to his brother who affixes the thumbscrew & leads him to the footlights. He asks the front row to note the pressure of wood on bone; it is a young woman who winks