Ghazal with Difficult Music
The first night she stays over, I oil my hands and listen
to her detail, ecstatically, the architecture of an organ--
its layers of pedals and pushkeys, the rank-and-file pipes
inlaid into chapel walls, whole blueprints organized
around a sacred building’s breath. People forget it’s a wind
instrument, she muses. But in the third century, the first organ
only had one note. Through my imagination I spin that original wall-
shaking whistle that called a town to prayer, the reed-tongued organ
bellowing its one-toned tune. I want to love this image purely, without
freighted symbolism. But we both know she can only be an organist
for a certain kind of church, the kind that makes allowances for our
humanity, our shared religion’s discord as inbuilt as its organ’s
pipes. Is it possible for us, in this age of unforgiving, to cherish
an old instrument’s flawed design, to accept the organs
of power that push us into open-throated song? Her lower back
is tight as an untuned orchestra. These muscles, too, an organ:
a warm-blooded network roughed with worried damage. It’s easy
to destroy a body. Time alone will wear our fasciae thin as organza.
Little by little, she loosens—slip on a wheel. She sighs—air through a valve.
That feels so good, Emily. We are both as God made us: clay and breath. Organic.
to her detail, ecstatically, the architecture of an organ--
its layers of pedals and pushkeys, the rank-and-file pipes
inlaid into chapel walls, whole blueprints organized
around a sacred building’s breath. People forget it’s a wind
instrument, she muses. But in the third century, the first organ
only had one note. Through my imagination I spin that original wall-
shaking whistle that called a town to prayer, the reed-tongued organ
bellowing its one-toned tune. I want to love this image purely, without
freighted symbolism. But we both know she can only be an organist
for a certain kind of church, the kind that makes allowances for our
humanity, our shared religion’s discord as inbuilt as its organ’s
pipes. Is it possible for us, in this age of unforgiving, to cherish
an old instrument’s flawed design, to accept the organs
of power that push us into open-throated song? Her lower back
is tight as an untuned orchestra. These muscles, too, an organ:
a warm-blooded network roughed with worried damage. It’s easy
to destroy a body. Time alone will wear our fasciae thin as organza.
Little by little, she loosens—slip on a wheel. She sighs—air through a valve.
That feels so good, Emily. We are both as God made us: clay and breath. Organic.
| EMILY ROSE COLE is the author of THUNDERHEAD, a poetry collection from the University of Wisconsin Press, and LOVE & A LOADED GUN, from Minerva Rising. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University and a PhD in poetry and disability studies from the University of Cincinnati. |