echo location

by Kate Polak

The strains in an abandoned classroom were a new page —

tones mastering the same creamy range, blanching dull, 

then harried, then straining against whatever wall

they’re thrown across. But me, I’ll always take the twang

of fiddle over violin — reminds me of clear liquor, 

and the busy hurdling of concatenation, the frenzied

fingering, blown steel strings flailing from the neck: knotted

knuckles, that his play in this empty space made boiling lore,

attained, as his hands ranged, the grace of supplicant—

flagellating an Appalachian myth to form. The forearm posed

and crooked to push sinew to denim, clothed 

in all devoted practice of those renewed in covenant. 

After a late one, our hands were laughing at one another’s waists

when we were rudely interrupted, and so, rephrased.    

Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in Plainsongs, McSweeney’s, So to Speak, Coffin Bell, The Closed Eye Open, Inverted Syntax, and elsewhere. She lives in South Florida and aspires to a swamp hermitage.