The moiled reed in my mouth, the untuned fuzz
of octaves, your piano out of breath, losing time,
I sacrifice notes off my horn, 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,” aborted “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—
as if 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 forgotten guilt, long abandoned
missed notes.
I rise before my stop, and for a
shuddering instant,
watch a thick middle-aged man standing,
his bratwurst hand
on the shoulder of an old
woman. Her frail arm
reaches 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 songs of cardinals and blue-jays,
freeze
to watch blue herons glide away to the far shore.
The space you left grows, sucking
into itself
hikes, and weddings, and
anniversaries
all 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 octaves, your piano out of breath, losing time,
I sacrifice notes, use my right hand to point to 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 dream, us improvising
thick pillars of harmony, rushing aqueducts
of melody,
sound, a golden city rising
towards the sun.
Love you Will. This is exquisite. Concussed.!
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