The Clown Speaks Backstage to His Understudy by Patrick Whitfill
Associate poetry editor Hannah Cajandig-Taylor on today’s bonus poem: Patrick Whitfill knocks it out of the park with this fresh sestina that highlights the complex duality of comedy and tragedy. Who would have imagined such powerful emotional resonance and bittersweet emotion in a poem about a clown?! Whitfill’s piece has it all: a clever and punny tone wielded with tenderness, exploration of extravagant theatrics, and, most importantly, a clown with sage advice we could all stand to listen to.
The Clown Speaks Backstage to His Understudy
Look: I’ve worn these big boy shoes and wig
for years, but once I’m done, I’m taking off
whatever part of my face I can that won’t
leave me alone. Sometimes, in the audience,
someone will clap until my whole-milk and grease
painted face just shatters. That’s something like love.
But, let’s put that in a flask my heart can’t love
enough to keep full. Here’s where you’ll wig
out: when paint thinner looks tasty, and the grease
on your face won’t go without a peeling off
of the skin beneath. And sure, the whole crowd
cheers every time the pie smacks, but they won’t
line up to lick it off, to taste that cream. I won’t
lie anymore. I can’t. I’ve had good love
in my life, a woman who allowed the house
we shared to be my anti-stage. My wig
was a joke we took turns telling. I greased
it up, though, the two of us. When I’m off,
I’m really off. When everything that’s off-
stage turns into a fuck that you just won’t
give up the spotlight for, then know the grease
paint’s wearing thin, and all the signs marked Love
are trapdoors waiting for your exit. Wig
or not, you have to fake it all onstage—
your lines, the seltzer in the face. Offstage
too. Here, shake my hand. You feel that off-
center bone? The one that makes your hair
start tickling down your back? That’s the won’t
I’m trying not to live inside of. Love
is intermission, a chance to leave a grease-
stained kiss around a handrolled joint. If grease
was gold, then I’d be dead already. Yes, crowds
love tragedy almost as much as a love
story, but what they need is a way to get off
a jagged laugh. And that’s why we fall. But I won’t
fall forever. I won’t become the wig
I’m hiding under. I won’t. You hear that? The crowd
has risen. Lights gone off. Look: they’ll love you just
as long as you’re all wig, all grease, all theirs.
Patrick Whitfill has work in Boston Review, Threepenny Review, Kenyon Review Online, and many other journals. His chapbook, Curiosity, was released early in 2020 from New Michigan Press. Currently, he lives in South Carolina and teaches at Wofford College.
