Some Privileges
Did they teach you about this, growing up?
In classrooms of thirty and forty children
Sneakers squeaking on linoleum floors
Braces gleaming under fluorescent lamplights
Did you learn the scales of C Major and G?
Which circles are full and halved and
Descending in strategic marches from the
Treble clef?
Did they show you how to draw a clef note?
Did they teach you about how long to hold
The full circles
And the ones with little flags and staffs
Grandly processing
Up
up
up
and down
Dependable black lines
Learning how it feels to perform a breath
As written
How to cradle an instrument with strings
So that your heartbeat echoes the vibrations
Before the air does
I hold you tightly as you cry into my shoulders
Because you might fail the ninth grade
And you’re sad about that because your Mother will yell
You know what it feels like to disappoint someone
I wish I could give you what it feels like
To play a chord so perfectly and to hear it
And to understand that some things are meant to be
To hear that they are
But I hold you instead
Weeping
And whispering:
decrescendo, dolce
We gradually get softer, sweetly
Weeping:
Come prima, dolente
As before, mournful
Putting my arm around your waist, taking your backpack from you to descend the subway
platform, walking:
In relievo, sotto voce; subito triofale
A direction to make the melody stand out, voices in undertone; suddenly triumphant.
The train sucks all of the air out of the tunnel
And blows our hair back in arrival
You slump against me when we sit down
And I sing to you, softly
So you know that everything is
Going to be alright
And so you can feel it.
Burial Feathers
You mailed me dead sunflowers for my birthday
A puff of dried dust and crumbled curled
Petals spewed when
I ripped the paper of the envelope
I put the whole mess
next to your burial feather
on my mantel
One day, after you got off of the night shift
You smashed the television in the living room
With your favorite guitar
A vase of dried roses on the TV stand
shattered
Mixed with
Shards of deep black and blue glass
Snapped strings and splintered wood
It all was so beautiful, to me then
I took a photo of it
I thought it was art.
The next week when you shot yourself
I thought that was tragedy and I
Cried and cried and screamed
And the police took photos of your body
And days later
I curled up on the exposed floor where
The destroyed television
and roses had lain
Trying to remember what beauty felt like
Trying to forget the smell of death
And the last gurgling breaths you took.
At the funeral
We shook hands and kissed
Imagining this time was
A multiverse peeling into a million frames
Politicians singing gospel on Capitol steps
Mahalia, they’ll say, Mahalia we love you
California screeches East
Calling her sister coast in a Whitmanic-Yawp
Collapsible highways of the West
Fold upon themselves like paper maps
Sealed packaged and dropped
Soaring high above the planet earth
on aero-planes
Burning fuel made of our bodies
Gleaming with the steel of our stories
Hammered into the hull
And pressing ourselves
Together in embrace
Shrouded in black
Felt like cradling
Felt like staying
In safe spaces
Smaller than the inside of the coffin
Still oak
Still sturdy
Still shining
Black on black on black
And back to the shaking act
comforting each other
though church makes no promises
The organ is an ancient singer
Lifting notes
Inversions of phrases
Rising high
Flying keys
Bleed bleed
D’s and G’s and C’s
Pulling tears from our eyes
And we cry
and we cry
and we cry
For if you knew how we missed you
You would not stay away another day
Slovak Smelling Salts
Felipe gave me smelling salts in Slovenia
Evening hanging over morning
As the sheets clung to the bed frame
We had kicked them there
And I inhaled, through my nose
Lacking the words for senses of
Scents so kissing you on the shoulder
Instead and celebrating
The instinct of the Alps
Whipping around coursing warm
Bodies full of blood and
Exchanging some warmth with you
Shoeless in the frozen foothills
Padding to another hotel room
To rest my head on another’s chest
And lay naked, listening to The Heart of Saturday Night
You packed away your sorrows
And returned to Oxford
I to New York and
Felipe disappeared because
I’ll never be able to describe
What he smelled like.