Middle-School Production of The Tempest, When Closeted
after Terrance Hayes
Acting as Antonio + awkward at ambition.
Baptist basement, bare bones. Bedsheet
“curtain.” Can’t commit—cues, condition,
delivery. Downcast. Downstage, defeat
enters effortless, enunciates “escape”
following fairy feints. Foes faint. Ferdinand
galivants, gets goddess-gobsmacked. Great
Heavens, how human! How hopeful! Hands
intertwined. [Intimate? Illicit?] Intermission
just jockeys—jokes, jugular-judgements.
“Kids.” Klutz, klutz! kvetching kitchen-
loud. Like loverboy lassoed [ligaments
motionless], Miranda Molotov’s my misuse—
NO!, nearly nauseous. “Nice” naïveté’s noose.
Kieron Walquist [he/they] is a queer poet and visual artist from Mid-Missouri. Author of OUR HANDS HOLD VIOLENCE, a 2024 National Poetry Series winner and 2026 Norma Farber First Book Award finalist, his other work appears in Northwest Review, Poet Lore, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A 2026 Unbound Emerging Poet honoree, he holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and is currently a PhD student at the University of Utah.