| David
Ingle
I was nine, and Midnight
Special was past bed but
Saturdays my sitter came and
she was easy on the eyes, easy
on the rules. At nine a boy can
play the callow line, if he knows
what he’s about. I didn’t,
but managed, each Saturday
to crawl beside her on the layaway
couch and pray that the schoolyard
boys could see. Onscreen the Allman
Brothers jammed and I, putting on
years, asked how they hit
every note, how every skin and
string could rumble in rhythm with
the others, how precision could
be birthed of chaos. Of course this isn’t
what I said at all. She never replied
that the buzz I was hearing was closer
to mayhem than manner, that little
was planned, that in essence the Brothers
were winging it. I listened and shifted
and maybe she thought I missed my
mommy but oh how little she knew
what it was I really missed. As I lolled
I learned how form isn’t substance, how
fingers aren’t hammers, arms not bows,
how skin binds riot and faces are banners
on which the pulse scripts its struggle.
I’d learn more six weeks later when she,
passing through a green light, was crushed
and smeared by a stolen Chevy and the fugitive
behind its wheel. But this was not in time
to prevent me returning to the schoolyard
and describing for boys as baffled as me
every curve and fold of her foggy terrain:
how her tongue was a hook, how our teeth
clicked, two skulls, and the way her wider
hips ground against my brittle ones, how I
would have more for them next week, or
as soon as I could make it up.
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