Live at the Bitter End
By Ed Pavlic
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Live at the Bitter End - Ed Pavlic
I.
This is a minor chord, man.
How do you know it’s a minor chord?
That’s what it is, a minor chord with the third out.
—Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane
In jail everything is obvious…
—Reinaldo Arenas
RESULTS OF THE POLYGRAPH: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WHAT IF & WHEN
if this was a wet blouse
there’d be the shadow of fingers
if a leaf poured from a can
of paint there’d be veins
stiffened by the cold if this
was summer wind there’d be laughter
from across the lake if an
abandoned well it’d smell of broken
stone & you’d look down
in the dark for the loose end
of frayed rope if this was
a rusty nail there’d be a little
boy licking red dust
from his fingers if I was 13
again it’d be a simple matter
of off & on drag the pen
& pain runs down the block
if he was 20 again he’d have cut
himself & gone in after it
fist into brick if the angle was
right it’d move thru the flesh
like a song climbs all swole & yellow
up past the elbow if this
was a novel there’d be a scream
& a chance of meeting again
somewhere unthinkable if it were mine
one of us would miss the other
in an empty street there’d
be the panic of living
again the act like I knew
far more than I did if
these were letters to you
they’d be in the well
if breached inside
there’d be ash on the hips
& rattlesnake tea
when Paul Wittgenstein
returned from the war
the family refused to pay Ravel
for what he wrote to the phantom
right hand often we find
simply from impact reasonable
persons infer decisions
on the part of others
if she’d told me she needed
two things to count on
there’d have been
these at least : if it hadn’t been
for the broken guitar string
her hair’d have blown
left to right across her face
into my mouth & no one would ask
me what I said if
I spoke any louder than this here
PRETRIAL CONFERENCE IN CHAMBERS: FOGARTY THE D.A. & A. TREMBLE RICHTER THE INADMISSABLE PRIVATE EYE
he promised us a price & well-peeled
face ivory man & nothing else
no dynamite buried in a troubadour
quicklime on plaster & a Rialto
in the mouth lined with hum-gum &
saltpeter play the tape : "c’est toi qui sait c’est
toi qui sait" stop we have photos by day
he acts like horses grow reins in the womb by
night clear polish on banjo picks
& smokes the thick black eyes of stallions
no jury would dare too worried
about crepe stolen for safety-skulls
& rain etched spindles of salt
turns out he all about
borewind in the brain thoughts scat
silent chants of EZ pass & "free parking
forever" experts stayed behind we
clocked the pulse of footprints fossilized
in broken glass we gave chase but didn’t know
whether to taste the toll or pay off the tongue
frozen at half mast to the pole by the time
squads arrived deep enough in the
borough we have photos character
& caterpillar predation your