To The Listener

Monday, July 15, 2013
you can hear wood breaking                          you’ve gotten close
 
in the riverbed            with the crowd stacked in and the pallets burning
with a slice of rebar     someone flogs a beat onto a paint can
 
with a voice to hack a lawnmower
                                                    in half        a man in a wheelchair sings
 
with diminished fifths elbowed into his oak accordion      his words
                                                                       you must bend down to hear
 
you’ve gotten close
enough to smell his sawdust                             his cigar     a smoldering wand
 
and something of you is breaking
when he chants above the croaking accordion                something of your town
 
you must find for your people
in the sound of bones and wood
 
a sliver of joy                                           as the fifths of vodka diminish
as the crowd inches toward the fire
 
at the wheelchair                 you huck your spit-cup
in the tobacco sucker-punch
 
            in the fist         in the bottle
                           in the gravel
                                                       and the teeth
 
                                              in the final kick against the Ford’s fender
in the unhinged jaw
and in the sampling of a silent man’s pulse
 
when you step over the body
you hear music
                                              when you wipe the blood from your boot

 

Monday, July 1, 2013