Sandra Meek
Still Life with Dysphonia
Still Life with Dysphonia
In the palace of music, a gathering of the mute:
this became the body.
In the asphalt’s cracked path, a clutch
of frog eggs: a teaspoon of froth, a shoal of dark water
haloed blue. Mouths spooked open
to O, the choired sky; double
artifice, the trebled singers spoking the hall’s
spectacular skylight: coins of stained glass pooled
to a colossal droplet poising
the milling audience, bronze and copper
and gold. To make matter what wasn’t
between you, you said I
love you. Imported for this particular
drift, swan that circled the park’s tiny island, alto
clef of her neck in reflection among cypress
knees, a child being photographed in her dotted-swiss best
among the groomed daffodils. All those belled
golden throats. Click.
Click. The shuttered air recalling what you cupped
your ear to—the steeled tracks, the disappearing
parallel—what you lowered to the dampened
ground for, what you clear
your throat for: what isn’t
coming, though the soldered ceiling wheels
its staff of glazed bones above you:
The baton already lifted, cocked.