The Extra

Your line in the play was a monosyllabic

moment. The tree in the leafy corner

calling hark! You could easily recollect

it rhymed with bark—

yet still you flubbed it up—

the boy who played the beagle

yipped & yapped, you lost your

easy cue with his distraction.

 

Snoopy uttered nada

for 50 years. We were privy to his thoughts

& nothing more. What would the balloon

around your skull bare

as you skulk in a comic strip?

Acting as if you’re mute

or Marcel Marceau. Or the extra

in the movie on a gurney,

pretending you are dead—

while the doctors rush around you—

full of their importance de soi.

 

The rolling

beneath your eyelids

steal the show—marbles

like the ones you lost at school,

a pair of bloodshot orbs

bowled to a gutter,

a cue ball’s hasty drop

upon your first & second stabs,

fishing it out of the pocket

in your shame.

 

Yet you’ll finally land the

part you’ve always craved—

the assassin at the Chinese

Theatre—dizzied by its bulbs,

the condescending scrawls

celebrity gifts, to those

below its footstool, its black bic will

bleed carmine—to match the carpet

you nearly trip on

as your time to shine arrives.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

August 26, 2026

photograph: Darya Komarova / Getty Image