Charles Leggett is a professional actor based in Seattle, WA, USA. His poetry has been published in the US, Ireland (The Galway Review, Southword Journal, Automatic Pilot), the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Recent publications include Sublevel, As Above So Below, Ocotillo Review, and The Poet; work is forthcoming in Volney Road Review, Eunoia Review, and Heirlock Magazine. While visiting Ireland in 2013, Charles enjoyed hearing Irish poets and reading his own work at the Galway City Library, and acted in The Big Green Apple: Origin’s 1st Irish Festival, presented by the Attic Studio at Liberty Hall, Dublin.

Transformations and Other Tails

—Theatrical adaptation of the Anne Sexton poems, conceived and
directed by Sheila Daniels, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle WA, 1999

George the stuffed black leopard’s on his side
On top of Sheila’s print of the Bouguereau—
The peasant girl with pitcher—gazing wide

At the wall in question. Quiet, glassy-eyed,
He nuzzles her. And never mind his elbow,
His stuffed black leopard elbow on Sheila’s side

Of the bed, on Sheila’s paperback, tried
And true, of The Secret Garden, which yawns below
The lap of the peasant girl with pitcher, wide

Open. Never mind that I bestride,
Upon the bed, the fallen Bouguereau
And George the stuffed black leopard, who, with side-

long glances, grimly hints what it may betide—
The Klimt which has replaced with sylph-soft yellows
The peasant girl, her pitcher broken wide.

A gift from Sheila’s cast. Their freshly dried
Laundry waits with me and, with his sexton’s glow-
er, George the stuffed black leopard—at whose aside
The peasant girl with pitcher gazes wide.