Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsFall 2019  Vol. 18 No. 2
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back ASH BOWEN

Going to Your Funeral in a Vee Eight Ford

Tonight when I lit the light to a new kind
of sleeplessness, I found myself
in the basement, fingering the box
of forgotten records, listening
to Buddy Moss sing his woman down
onto a black bed of scratches. The needle
threads them together in a track
of crackling ruin. Unfaithfulness, a full-life policy:
He’s going to her funeral in a vee eight Ford.
Upstairs, my daughter has prayed
for my salvation from my abundance
of cells, the kind that mean
we’re growing apart. I think
about my life cut down
on wax, the miserable melody of its chords
and Buddy starts slowly snuffing out the light,
the needle of his voice lost in the record’s runoff groove
where there’s no music, only turning static, the arm
of the record player bumping against the black.  


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