Self-portrait: 2008
By Amelia Apfel
My father’s hand lifts the arm of the record player.
The rain starts, percussion steady over centuries
I want to hear it drum on the hood
of my green poncho, big enough to drown in.
Love of rhythm started in the womb:
her feet danced to West African drums
when I was less than born.
The arm swings, record hums into a slow spin.
Sister’s my dance partner now—
we shared tree-house dreams
and crab fresh from Puget Sound
cracked wide open on the concrete steps.
Taste of ocean the reward for tackling those claws.
The needle kisses vinyl, slow, graceful
like my pencil on the notebook from high school
mimicking my mother’s careful hand
sketching skeletons into alignment.
Ribs, vertebrae, a bird; kingfisher
skimming east over those peaked mountains.
Later, my plane traces his current.
Curiosity’s palette is a desert sunset
over a city splashed with jacarandas
where fork-tailed kites swirl in a scorched blue sky
and I learn to cook chapatti, one by one
in the soft charcoal dark on a pine-log fire.
The summer repeats itself that year.
I hear the laser call of a cardinal,
piercing dawn, and the names of wildflowers (butterfly weed, mayapple)
we sit on the roof and blow smoke rings
embraced by the leaves of a poplar.
The needle clicks into a groove.
The first undulating harmony
pours through telephone lines, gentle voice in my ear.
A death in the family (terminal cancer).
We’ll remember him now, connected across the coasts,
by raucous laughter on the porch
clinking glasses of scotch and slow-burning cigars.
——
Amelia Apfel is a barista and magazine intern who hopes to incorporate creativity and compelling prose into science journalism, traveling and writing for a living.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 2:00 am and is filed under Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
