Memory and Music

At first glance the two poems in our June issue couldn’t seem more different. “My memory of you is a knife,” begins Jarod K. Anderson’s “Tending the Wound,” a short study of longing that’s as sharp as the image in its first line. Jared Harél’s playful “Ode to Middle School Band” captures an audience’s mix of trepidation and pride at a school concert. (Anyone who’s watched a group of kids perform will know the feeling.) Though the poems’ tones are quite dissimilar, at the heart of both are emotions many of us will recognize. If you’d like to hear the authors read their work, click the Play buttons below.

Take care and listen well,
Nancy Holochwost, Associate Editor

 

Tending the Wound
By Jarod K. Anderson

My memory of you is a knife

with no sheath,
heavy as November in my pocket.

I reach for it anyway.
I offer my fingers like it’s a loose dog
with too much stillness in it.

And, of course, it bites.

But if my blood is what you need
to stay crimson
when all other memories fade to ash,

then open me up,
a sudden sting at 2 AM,

without waiting for my blessing.

Ode to Middle School Band
By Jared Harél

All shuffle into this stuffy
school gym to behold
the clumsy miracle of hands—
where to put them, how, when.
When the conductor stands,
whatever does she intend
to wrench from these tweens
in starched white shirts, black
slacks? From brass, winds,
that wide-eyed, whip-thin
percussionist in the back,
gripping his mallet like a bent
bayonet? O bless each Oh
crap intake of breath as notes
begin to clatter and crash.
As proud parents squint
into programs and younger
siblings groan for snacks.
Here is the opus of our youth,
our future, of all that is holy
and wholly ill-equipped.
Drugstore roses collapse
on scratched bleachers. Each
child their own gleaming
instrument of light.