The Truth

 

Caleb Scott





Untitled Document

I did not know hummingbirds

eat mosquitoes. I thought

their beaks were wired closed,

 

the sharpened tongue doing

all the work, flower to

flower to flower, ripping

 

past the dragonfly, the

butterfly for one last

drink before the tiny heart

 

dries up, trapped in that

forever dance of

sustenance. But this

 

one, flipping forward on

an invisible chord, stabs

madly at an unseen pleasure,

 

what flowerless cloud

of nectar is there

hung between cup of leaf,

 

unbloomed geranium?

She picks at the naked

air, the nearby

 

lantana vine

confused and drooping.

 

Then, in a perfection

of time arrested, her

body pauses

 

     there, wings

a blurry thought

 

of movement. And with

that eye that hides

a million fires, she looks

 

as if to see what warmth

of body I might be

hiding. It was wrong of me

 

to believe she is

not seeking blood
like all the others.


***

Caleb Scott is a writer and actor. His plays and performance pieces have been produced and presented at venues in New York City and around the country, including Classic Stage Company, HERE Arts Center, La MaMa ETC, the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles, Diversafest in Tulsa and the Wooster Group’s Performing Garage. He is an associate artist with Colt Coeur Theater in New York and a founding member of the FLEET playwrights workshop in Los Angeles. Caleb’s writing has appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, Nashville Review, Typishly Literary Journal and Eclipse, and his first book, U.F.O., was published in 2006 by PowerHouse Books. His films have screened in festivals all over the world, including the Toronto International Film Festival, Raindance in London, Cinequest in San Jose, Palm Springs International Film Festival and Aesthetica in York, UK. He has been a finalist for an Academy of Motion Pictures Nicholl Fellowship, a finalist for the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program at Juilliard, a nominee for Best Actor and Best Writer by the Kinsale Shark Awards, and his plays have been selected as finalists for the Playwrights Foundation Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the Eugene O’Neill Theater’s National Playwrights Conference. Caleb is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the recipient of a Dartmouth Senior Fellowship in Writing. He lives in Miami, Florida.