Articles

If you ever had your Bach, Beethoven, Bartók or Britten on 33 RPM vinyl or 78 RPM shellac, you will have heard my Great Aunt Tilda—even if you’ve never heard of her.

She appeared on every prestigious classical-music label—Deutsche Grammophon, Archiv Produktion, Philips, RCA Red Label, CBS Masterworks—from the late 1930s to the mid-1970s. (She did not, fortunately, live long into the 1980s, by which time, thanks to the digital re-mastering of recordings from the vault, her legacy had been all but obliterated.)

The morning I first saw snow, real real snow, as it rained onto my black coat purchased the night before from Ross-Dress for Less, I stood outside my main door, frozen in place, my fists clenched to the sides in fear.

Something broke the spell. It was either a student’s question or an answer to one already suspended in air. It prompted our professor, a tall white man with the kindest voice and bluest eyes, to start talking about Vietnam. He gripped the sides of his chair, his words trembled, and his sobs, loud and full of sorrow filled up what had been until then just another regular classroom of my life.

At drift log #38 you had jogged 457 strides. That’s an average of about 12 strides per log, which you recall was a low stride/log ratio. It must have been a stormy winter to deposit all those logs, you surmised. At log #78 you noticed a group of seagulls flocking around what would be log #83. At log #80, log #83 looked less like a log. At log #82, log #83 looked more like a body. At stride 975 you confirmed log #83 was a human corpse.

I pick all the raspberries. A ritual now, I fill the bowl. I waste a few while pulling, wait for their stains on my hands. This is unguided presence and meditation, a keeping myself, on my knees in the bush reaching for the ripe and grown. I’m getting the metaphor out early —- the hanging …

I write the word on ice-fogged glass not yet shattered by night

raids. This is routine, one man removed and cuffed and bashed about his head.

Tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1561.
I’m smiling right out of my face;

whether it’s the sunset or the hummingbirds,
I can’t be sure. I’m exhausted by springtime

Alter- / inner-ego,

vulnerable
to everything outside

and everything within.

Beneath the boat, metal
artifacts. Remnants of Deliverance, the SS
Mont-Blanc’s collision. Wartime
vessels, twisted & tacked
under sediment, the sea floor.

The sea. Sky. Glittering, two sequined
pilgrims. A tear in my sleeve grows, pale skin
disfigured by light, by shadow. Long nights

on water, my breaths I hold like fumes