Portrait of EEEEEEEEEE

Violin rehearses the gape of a sorrow.
Red memory of one two three four hammers.

Violin is sprouting her wildflower giggles.
Violin wraps a long neck around my wrist.

Violin’s blue tremors wrack the sea.
Violin’s sentences rise and fall like a wave.

Violin tires of swimming.
Violin is in her bare mind.

Let’s sharpen Violin’s strings.
Let’s sharpen Violin’s EEEEEEEEEE

Violin has a daughter called.
Silence it is over now.

No a son he is called how.
Many claps amount to applause.

Violin cries herself to EEEEEEEEEE
Branches grow over Violin’s weeping.

On Disappointments in Music

It was staggering Sibelius’s love
for the violin. Even as day and night 
swept around him he felt he could never
practice enough. But one day he woke
to find in place of his violin bow a bitter
stalk of winter. It was time for the lover
to realize his love would never be
enough. Too late too old too full
of tremor. He picked up his pen 
and grieved. For what else was there
left to do? He wrote until there were
no more voices inside. One night
he found that the only sound left 
inside his body was that of ice
melting. He had had enough.

Reprinted from Fugue Body (Signal Editions/Véhicule Press, 2025), with permission from the author and the press.