History of Lyric
BY DAVID EHMCKE
What disappears from the world lives on
in the mind. Billie Holiday
sings standards as I take a long drag
outside the club and look for signs
in my cigarette-smoke-screened sky.
In a blue mood, from ruin I return
to a subterfuge fugue. I tear
out a page from the book
he read to me. I squeeze the rim
of a champagne flute until it cracks.
You are angry because the gods are angry
with you, my grandmother told me
when she was alive. Now
this wine’s my sea. I drink it.
My land is glass. I thought I needed a muse
to tell the truth, but alone
I’ve learned to weave
a music from the silence.
I know: my story’s old.
But it’s the wreckage I’ve inherited.
He’s here. He leaves. He left. I sobbed
like the child I was on the bed.
I failed, I thought,
I’m hurt even by my own heart—
What can console me now?
Across the pillow, my hair
fanned into the broken strings of a harp.