Poetry
There's Always a Note Being Played Somewhere
Izzy Gage
in the barn of the house
where everyone's
doing acid,
there's an old upright
piano with the faceboard missing.
it's faded husk
does little to protect
the cats cradle of wires that makes up
its guts and soul.
initials have been scratched
into the aged wood and when i try to read them,
"it came like that," a woman tells me.
did it come with the carcass
of a dead rat,
and the skull of a frog?
those death heads, there,
balancing on a row of black keys?
she doesn't know and she plucks
a low E and smothers
it softly with its hammer.
the tone buzzes against the cushion
and dies out.