Reading in RealAudio

Like voltage the band throbs                               
in the light-gauge    
young bodies that
              twist and
        wind
     through the circuitry
   the calculated labyrinth
    the Byzantine politics of a good time.
     Julia dances to the cross rhythm
      (maybe more than just friends)
     of a boy with all the right
    frequencies.

  Clinging to her tenaciously
 frightened
excited
                         holding on by a fistful
                      of loose thoughts
                   is a toddling
              sexuality
a needy awkward charge
          that she doesn’t quite
               know what to do with.
When she sways    
and undulates       
it sways         
and undulates       
with her     
clinging tight  
its grip the slight
bounce   
of her breasts       
                                  the smile she gives her partner as
                                                     his eyes bob
                                                                                    down to her chest.

 

Down the street,
when old Mrs. Praeger
gets to her feet
and thinks about bed,

there’s no metal
and crimson to the beat.
Heating duct creak.
Clock tick.

No sexual ad space
available in the rhythm.
Russet memory cantabiles
(piano) fluttering

down in their codetta,
swish, sigh, rustle, shut.
But what of the gaps
in the autumnal Adagietto,

the rests of
Gummy Bear green?
She stoops to pick a toy
up off the floor.

How can she explain
the shunting of the serene
harmonic locutions back
to the grab-a-note wail?

How can she explain
the snag in the temporal wiring,
the short circuit
called grandchildren?

Those simple starts,
those notes
in the yellowed
maternal sheet music

fall so strangely
under the fingers now,
and though the melody
somehow pulls through,

she feels it
made awkward by
tones of old silver
and all-told.

She guesses that learning
to play a good beginning
upon a definitively tuned
end will just take

practice, practice.
The baby begins
(tenuto) to cry
from the spare room.

  
 
 
 

  

Back at the high school dance,
Annette vomits into the toilet
(two missed periods and now this)
as the band throbs through the
door but can’t reach through
the pounding in her head.

Childhood,
you get only
one shot at it,
but which end
of the gun is
she holding?
They’d just done
it a few times,
two kids fooling
around with the
loose ends
of adolescence,

 pulling and
twisting the
genitalia-strings,
they hadn’t meant
to tie the opening
shut, she can’t
even imagine not
being able to
crawl back into
the pink and
quilted quiet of
being too young.

The music no longer seems familiar
as something keeps the beat by banging
her head again and again against
a wall that couldn’t possibly be there.

 

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