Jake's Flea Market

after our fellow students had gone
out from the lecture room

and only guildenstern remained
rosenkrantz and myself   we
for whom he was brotherly dear

hamlet rose from his chair
grave faced   stoic
as the stone now on his father’s tomb
on his mother’s   his uncle’s

the stone that now marks his place
that neither celebrates nor grieves

with the features that stone inherited
from his then countenance   he rose

asked that we leave him

i stood like my student gown
weighed boulder heavy as the steel
plates of armour his father wore

when alberti told me hamlet   had received
such tidings   tragic from home