after the music of Ross Bolletter
by David Miller
Goggled men in orange jackets,
take sledgehammers to a bootless piano,
a swayback banished to pasture.
The only sounds the creature utters
is the crackings of wood flown to fragments,
whack of soundboard fallen to
concrete. Or sent end over end
down two flights to the parking lot,
carapace popped
as a turtle meets a mean boy
with a ball peen.
These are smashed pianos.
These are not ruined pianos.
Set a fire inside an old upright.
Place it upon a stone plaza at dusk.
A fireplace of wood
falling to char. Tongueless,
strings melted. Its only sound
the roiling of flames against air.
This is an auto-da-fé’d piano.
It is not a ruined piano.
A ruined piano was pushed to the all-weather porch
and forgotten or escorted out to the barn.
A ruined piano wandered outdoors,
and nobody called it back home.
Immigrant ruined pianos were left on the shore.
A ruined piano waits in the rehearsal room
as accompanists stroke the younger piano.
A ruined piano won’t speak as it should.
Stuck zipper voice. It smiles
and a drawerful of forks falls to the floor.
Table-sawn syllables. Step dance
in a suitcase of mud. Chime clusters
tuned to its brainwaves. Notes fricate
the back of its teeth. Coughs collapse
into its body, ricochet metal spit.
Aluminum ice storms. Tobacco-wrecked gabble.
Temple bells made of old pans. Horseshoe nails
against slate. Warehouse of domino-fallen
door frames. Dump truck emptying granite.
Heartbeat of ball bearings. Clacked bones
in the throat.
A ruined piano—wedding gift
for a perfect pitch mother. A ruined piano
cuddles field mice. A ruined piano
somehow came with the house.
A ruined piano is at least
out of the way.
David P. Miller’s chapbook, The Afterimages, was published by Červená Barva Press. His poems have recently appeared in Meat for Tea, riverbabble, Nixes Mate Review, Naugatuck River Review, and HedgeApple, among others. His poem “Kneeling Woman and Dog,” first published in Meat for Tea, was included in the 2015 edition of Best Indie Lit New England. With a background in experimental theater before turning to poetry, David was a member of the multidisciplinary Mobius Artists Group of Boston for 25 years. He was a librarian at Curry College in Milton, Mass., from which he retired in June 2018.