The moiled reed in my mouth,
the untuned fuzz
of your piano, out of breath
and losing time,
I sacrifice notes, use my
right hand to point our place
on the page. We had an
audience, and they forgave us:
we weren’t performing for
music, but you and I, mother,
never could admit ourselves
to something like that.
We stumbled “If I Were a Rich Man,” ended “Sunrise, Sunset”
in early evening, and I
walked you out of confusion
into confusion, to the
bedroom where you wished us
to go back and perform it
perfect, but you had already
forgotten anything beyond
the burden of awake.
*
I have a half-memory of
walking my elementary school
linoleum dinge halls, half-lit
as a dust-storm,
and Scott Stover, who’s
great-grandfather, or great-
great grandfather had opened
the first general store
in our town’s history. He sat against the painted cinderblocks,
expelled from our class for
some anonymous third-grade offense.
I don’t remember why, or
what reason, or if there was—
but I remember taking my
hand and throwing his skull
against the wall, as a chimp
would crack a coconut
against a rock. He was concussed, although that word,
concussed,
didn’t carry the same weight of brain juice
and
spinal fluids then as it does now, after the double-
murder
suicide of Chris Benoit, after Junior Seau ate
a
bullet and his family allowed a posthumous study
of
his brain, as if the scrambles of a shuddered mind
might
be a direct correlation to whatever thoughts
consume
a juggler in the months and minutes
and
fractions of minutes before he looks at his pins,
methodically
rotating, ticking and spinning in the air,
before
he closes his palms against his chest
and
allows the cascade into earth, like lit matches
falling
into the bowl of a toilet. You spoke to me about it,
never
able to admit the action that was within my hands,
that
your sweet son did look at him, and with some level
of
awareness, though I have no memory of what this instant
could
possibly have felt like, snap hard his head
against
that wall. You were the purity
running through
my
DNA. There’s a weak metaphor
somewhere
about
your soul contrasted with your pancreas—
you
gave everything to the spirit, and left nothing
for
your body. Sometimes I wake up
from myself
wondering
how I have these memories, the path
of
destruction left in my landmonster wake:
I
don’t remember why friends won’t speak to me,
how
these street signs ended up in my bed, or if I enjoyed
the
way his coconut head echoed down the hall.
*
I
seize a narrow gap between the closing doors and the mob
packing
the metro, fleeing the harsh excuse me
of a woman, her words
eviscerated by the seal of the subway doors, drifting
into the chorus
of
abandoned guilts, long forgotten missed notes.
I rise
before my stop, and for a shuddering instant,
watch
a thick middle-aged man, his bratwurst hand
on
the shoulder of an old woman. Her frail
arm reaches
to
tightly grip his mitt. She
trembles in the crowd.
He
taps her shoulder with his thumb—flickering, keeping time.
*
It’s
been two years since I cut locks
off
your cold head, since I twisted
the
wedding band off your empty finger.
You
hiya Will and I hiya Ma back, we walk
under
elms and sycamores, listening
for
the songs of cardinals and blue-jays,
watch
herons glide away to the far shore.
The
space you left grows, sucking into itself
hikes,
and weddings, and anniversaries
draped
in your shadow, song lyrics ablaze like tinder
when
they’re sang: a lil water came
*
The moiled reed in my mouth,
the untuned fuzz
of your piano, out of breath
and losing time,
I sacrifice notes, use my right
hand to point our place
on
the page. We had an audience, and I wish we hadn’t—
that
our last duet could’ve been without the pressure
of
performance, that it could have had the focused inertia
of
rehearsal, you taking the time to help me play
the
notes right—that it could’ve been a hike, us improvising
thick
trunks of harmony, wind bursting in melody,
sound,
a golden forest rising towards the sun.
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