from You Tell Me
what music peppers your meat
what music tenderizes
what music assaults it
what music forgets why it knocked
what music retraces the ornaments while it waits to remember
what music backs away with its battered briefcase alongside
what music mows the lawn
what music saws the tooth
what music gathers the doodles
what music bundles them with mercury and twine
what music waits and continues
what music meant to ask you in
what music left nothing behind
what music orbits and glistens around the points of an inherited crown
what music soft-weighs on her head through her hair
what music still rests there for a little while after it’s been taken off
what music takes off
what music sticks to the roof of your mouth
what music slips through oyster phlegm
what music calcifies barnacles
what music adheres to the underside
what music leaves you hungry
what music smooths the bedsheets with a flat hand that once bathed you
what music swirls galactically
what music swirls soft-servingly
what music twirls with its silver tray aloft
what music pulls in and toward and back to forward glide
what music swings the slow ballad hard
what music puts the drive up under it
what music compresses, fires, transmits
what music rotates the axle
what music eases the wheel at ten and two, gloved
what music parallel parks
what music directly examines
what music elicits the truer truth on cross
what music bears it even though it can’t
what music retires to chambers
what music inverts the image
what music clicks
what music fixes it
what music licks it
what music draws the curtain
what music embroiders the hem
what music replenishes itself
what music mends its own aura
what music opens the window for ya
what music glimpses itself, smiles back at
what music guides the second hand
what music thickclicks toothlock
what music farts and widens its eyes
what music gulps
what music strides unhesitatingly across the dunes with the night surf to its left, pastel hotel fronts to the right, the dolly shot tracking behind
what music justs and readjusts through city crowds like locusts in swarm
what music shoulder-fakes and opens it up down the sideline
what music makes the open-field tackle
what music plays to the crowd
what music utters
what music babbles
what music spreads like butter, cold, on toast
what music spreads it
what music plugs it, cocks the ring
what music braces, supports
what music hoists the underlying tune
what music tells you so
you tell me
Mark Dow
Illustration Nick Victor