Charles Leggett is a professional actor based in Seattle, WA, and a 2022 Lunt-Fontanne Fellow. Recent/forthcoming publications include Does It Have Pockets?, Kinpaurak, the engine(idling, Apocalypse Confidential, and Beach Chair; his chapbook Hard Listening appears in the latest Ravenna Press “Triple” series edition, No. 25. Charles’s co-adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths premiered in 2024 at Intiman Theatre with The Seagull Project, and his poetry film short To Fondle Nothing has screened as an Official Selection at film festivals in the US, the UK (Scotland and England), Portugal, Serbia, Italy, and Austria.

                                            Yellow, Early September, Late Evening, Cherrywood Lane

Three stars describe
a right angle. A huge moth

surges through a cone
of grainy lamplight. Branches hang

like ill-assorted dreadlocks. A doorbell
glows across the cul-de-sac.

Three or four dogs can't shut up.

Two full-grown trees inches
apart, smooth rocks assembled at their base,

are a hairy stork,
beakless and contemplating

a step towards the street.
An apparent wrong turn

is unhurriedly corrected
under the auramine glare

of the blind alley's bulbs.
A basketball baseboard's hoop, long

without strings, yawns
with the freeway's relentless, dry tongue.


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