Lacrosse
Noon, locker room, cinder blocks pancaked in beige. Only a
fool undresses first. Coach throws the bolt. He speaks of bones.
He speaks of bogs. Of how to pin down what is wrong until the
weak leathers into hide. Until the ghosts become so sodden they
cannot rise. And before Coach leaves, he says we must choose a
locker and feed our secrets through its gills. I choose B42. I tell
it I once thought finches were baby pigeons. That in the woods
by the river I keep a cigar box. That inside is a square of foil fold-
ed around a stolen condom. That I have a fantasy that I am an
ancient god who makes lightning in the cosmos under the blue
fur of my blanket at night. I confess I used to think women gave
birth through the wrong opening. I whisper to the slats that I
will always fear lacrosse sticks and the arrogance of boys. What
is in the ductwork booms, and outside, the gymnasium bursts
into a chatter of squeaks. All that hunger tethered and blind as a
nest of baby birds. And then a low grind—a bass rolling. Was it
the varsity siege engine? Or those heavy studded wheels, ruddy
with sacrifice, of the pep band juggernaut?
– Seth Hagen
Pas Seul
At Oleander and Osprey, my father dances. Adagio. Mango has
fallen and split on the sidewalk. Lizards pose and dart like bits
of a dream. He may hear strings. He may hear the play of light
and cloud after the bruising of a storm. What refracts through
violence rises with the scent of earth. It mounts like a wet foal
to its feet. Variation. At the entrance to the Hall of Seven Thou-
sand Birds, he dances the lost names of the seven thousand
birds. Each one he birded out from its island and cover of scrub,
its tundra or jungle. The big resplendent ones obscured behind
frosted glass. The little gray ones pinned to trays and slid inside
wood cabinets. At my father’s turn, they spook up and whis-
tle away. He sways and draws above him a circle between past
and future. He may hear piano. A simple progression of chords
like something his mother used to play. Coda. He approaches
the diving board. He ties black crepe around his upper arm. He
lifts his chin. He makes long sweeping steps. Two of his grand-
children wait in the pool, the surface of which is netted in gold
bands from the sun. He does not know their names, but he can
hear the song of the water displaced by the form of their bodies.
It is high and bright as a trumpet.
– Seth Hagen
Silver Trombone
I have a silver trombone.1 It sits in its case like a spleen.
~
I take my trombone to the lake to seduce the water with my rutting song.
I open the case, take the pieces from the red lining, mount the bell on the
slide. I screw the mouthpiece in. It is enough. This edge of desire. I take the
trombone apart. I put the trombone away.
~
Father’s trombone helps him with his uncobbling. Together, they work with
an awl on the welt of his mind. Yesterday, they perforated the names of peo-
ple, cities, birds he used to know. This morning, over Grape Nuts, Father
tells me he dreamed again of making his trombone into wind chimes. His
trombone does not look up from its paper. It asks to pass the honey.
~
Mother is one of the great trombonists because she respects the instru-
ment’s duende enough never to mingle breaths. When I was born, she
planted her trombone in the raised bed where it thrives, unplayed. Some
springs, it blooms bleeding hearts, other years, blood red lilies dangle from
the lip of the horn. Unlike the other trombone greats—Fred Wesley, Albert
Mangelsdorff, Jack Teagarden—my mother will live forever.
~
Sometimes I keep the case open as I sit in my blue room and think. Lately,
about parasites. It is not wrong to call love parasitic. The way a worm lives
in and drains what it loves. It ought not offend.
~
I cannot abandon my trombone. Once, I scattered it deep in the killing
desert. It came back wry and bright, a few cactus spines in its smirk, and
coughed a fat scorpion from its throat. This is how I came to suspect I was
an artist.
1. Before there were trombones, there were sackbuts, so named for a kind of hook used to
pull a person off a horse. Before there were sackbuts, there was the yowl down in the black
guts of beasts and people. There swam the two kinds of pain: the killing kind and the kind
we kill for.
– Seth Hagen
