by Brett Rutherford
I would most likely be among
the angels who rebelled.
While others were hurled
from the cliff-edge of Paradise,
I, sick of the place,
would leap willingly.
Nine days we'd fall.
Then, from my own
individual Hell,
I’d plague the Devil.
by Brett Rutherford
I neither hip nor hop,
I neither tik nor tok.
My hand has never turned the key
to make an auto start.
The things I wish had never been
make quite a list, you see:
the gas-bomb car foremost of all,
the things I call inedible —
okra and cottage cheese,
mushroom and avocados.
Strip malls and six-lane
highways make me yearn
for a sudden apocalypse.
Ears covered, I uninvent
the electric guitar
(there, I have said it!)
Each day fresh horrors
present themselves,
some incomprehensible.
Vape stores one side of me,
tattoo parlors the other,
a shop-sign offering
to thread my eyebrows,
or make my visage
botox paralytic.
Born in another
century, I have no clue.
I still have no idea
what a Kardashian is.
by Brett Rutherford
The white moth, solitary, the meadow’s
lyric poet, has neither master nor peer.
His wingbeats define, defend domains
as the quest for the lover, invisible,
a smidgin of a thing dun-brown,
expectantly athwart a trembling branch,
the thought of whose existence sustains him.
His quest will be epic in advance of the frost.
Together they might meet tragically
if at all: Romeo, too late, at Juliet’s grave,
or Isolde, too late, expiring upon
his grounded, dead, pale pinions.
On every lawn I pass, on each
well-tended patch of native plants,
even the most denuded place presents
its single, white, solitary moth.
For the first time ever, one lands
upon my open palm, lingers
just long enough to hail me:
Brother!
by Brett Rutherford
Did anything happen?
Two days of waiting,
of doing nothing,
contemplative rest.
No “creating” allowed
so as not to compete
with the solemn anniversary
of, well, the creation of everything.
Christian New Years
is nothing next to this --
some random day
observing the seeming orbit
of a planet around its sun.
They gather in crowds.
A ball drops. Then, drunk,
they all fall down.
What a bunch of schmegegge!
Now, Rosh Hashanah
is something else, no less
than the anniversary
of the universe itself.
Chaos, clouds,
the formless void,
the parting of waters,
the making of suns,
dust clotted into planets,
all of it, as counted out
on earth-days, sun years,
galactic time, gravity
and space curvature
all taken into account,
this is the birthday
of birthdays, the Big Bang’s
candle blowout. Go for it!
Did anything happen?
Two nights of candlelight
and some uneasy sleep
(like a greedy young boy
on the eve of gift-giving).
The sun is up.
Time to turn on the news.
When the clock of the cosmos
tipped up to midnight
and down to dawn,
was there even a bump,
a rattle, a shake in the treetops?
Did tyrants tumble off
their gilded thrones? Did
evil-doers apologize
and make amends to the poor?
Did anyone intending
to decapitate anyone
think better of it
and put the sword aside?
Did missiles sputter out
and fail to drop? Did guns
forget where their bullets were?
Alas, the news
seems just as bad as ever.
Yet as I walk this morning
it seems a softer sun,
an air less dense
with the burning of forests,
birds calling one another
with shana tova greetings,
a sense from them at least
that things, if not great,
will not be as bad as they might.
At the top of the year,
something there is
that is not schmegegge.
As
Nadia
practices
in
Gdansk,
Lidia
plays
grandmother’s
spinet
in
Krakow.
A
school piano in Warsaw
hums
by
itself
in
resonance.
No
one
knows
they
play
to
one
another,
that
the
Polish
girls
have
long
ago
ceased
needing
to
guide imprinted keys in their etudes.
No
one
suspects
they
are
secret
weapons,
strings
drawn taut,
brass
frames
like
crossbows.
Determined
and
sinister,
shining
and
black
as
coffins in a showroom,
they
bide
their
time
rehearsing
the
Revolutionary
Etude
for
the
people,
the
Marche
Funèbre for
the martyrs,
roulades
of
Paderewski
held
in
reserve.
The
police
think
nothing
of
the
white-haired
tuner
—
he
goes from home to home, adjusts,
re-strings
and
tempers,
adds
unusual
parts
to
the
pedals.
An
abandoned
piano
factory
springs
to
life,
new
models
in
crates
on
the
loading
docks,
the
shipping manifests immaculate.
It
seems
that
everyone
is
getting
a
piano.
The
Minister
of
Finance
shrugs.
The
economy
opens
an eye and goes back to sleep.
The
Minister of Culture smiles:
music
without
words
is
a
harmless
expression
of the people’s art.
2
Nadia
practices
in
Gdansk.
In
Krakow
her
grandmother’s
piano
is waiting.
In
Warsaw
the
instrument
she
studied on
hides
in
a
cellar
(the
piano
underground).
Then
from
a
million
radios
a
great C
resounds,
eight
octaves
thick,
a
Resurrexit
of
brass
and
wood,
a
rhapsody of unity,
harmonics
to the nth degree.
Casters
unlock,
wheel
guards
are
thrust aside.
Grands
roll
through
empty
apartments,
tiptoe
impossibly
down
curving
stairs.
Spinets
swerve
out
from
alleyways.
Baby
grands dart
from
tree
to
tree,
play
cat
and
mouse
with
the
traffic
police.
The
sergeant leafs through
reports
of
abandoned
furniture,
scratches
his
head
in
puzzlement.
It is, of course, the piano rebellion.
The
pianos are coming:
wheeled
piano
tanks
death
black,
coffin-shaped,
polished
and retrofit
with
well-tuned
armaments.
They
all
play
Chopin
in
unison
—
the
Military
Polonaise.
Their
lids
drum
open
and
shut
like
jaws,
rolling
on tractor tires, juggernauts
rumbling
bass
notes,
the
r-r-r-rum-ta-tum
of
Polonaise
audacity.
The
battle
begins:
Pianos
crash
from
the
rooftops.
A
phalanx of interlocked pianos
take
the
field,
sound
boards
locked
in
invincible
wedges.
Flying
pianos
buzz
over
the
airport,
their
black and white teeth
rat-tat-tat
arpeggios,
down
with
ease
the
clumsy
MIG
fighters.
They
drive
the
generals
into
the
sea.
The
troops desert,
lock
arms and dance
into
the
countryside.
File
clerks
toss
documents
from
windows,
topple
file cabinets,
pour
chicken soup on bureaucrats,
sing
r-r-r-rum-ta-tumin
in
the
hallways.
Cornered
in
public
squares
the
secret police deny everything,
their
crimes,
their
ranks,
their
names.
In
Warsaw
the
sweating
minister
of
secret
police
and
internal
security
shouts
on his hot wire to Moscow:
“Not
royalists,
stupid,
royali,
pianos!
it’s
an uprising of legions of pianos.
Tell
them
—
tell
them
the
pianos
are
coming!”
The
connection is broken by a piano wire.
Instruments
re-gather
in
the
countryside.
Flying
Becksteins
invade
Soviet
airspace,
lead
missiles
cat-and-mouse
back
to
the
planes
that
launched
them.
(Whoever
thought a hammerklavier
could
turn
right
angles
at
Mach
2?)
The
Polonaise
goes
on.
Others
conduct
guerrilla
war
to
the
shifting
beat
of
Mazurkas.
Lithe
and
supple
assassins
hunt
down
the
Russian
advisors
(those
white enamel spinets,
fast
on their wheels,
eager
to
leap
from
a
third
floor
window
to
squash a fleeing foreigner!)
Steinways
roll through Warsaw,
Polish
flag on their sides,
Bösendorfers
to the rescue at Lidice,
Baldwins
at
the
border
to
reinforce
them,
Becksteins
fight
shoulder-to-shoulder
with
lowly domestic models.
Antique
pianos in square cases
come
apart
at
the
joints
but
fight;
half
dozen
harpsichords
at
the
windows,
watch
wistfully.
Their
quills
fly
out
like
arrows.
A
tiny
virginal
bursts
its
frame
to
whip
a
visiting
professor
of
Marxism,
draws
blood with snapping steel wires.
The
highway
is
clogged
with
black
Volgas.
Battalions
of Russians fall back in retreat.
And
this is but the start of it:
As
Anna
practices
in
Leningrad,
Irina
plays
grandmother’s
spinet
in
Moscow.
A
school piano in Odessa
hums
by
itself
in
resonance.
