Assistant Editor Chelsea Whitton: This poem’s defining gesture is one of imaginative empathy—the poet’s mind exploring and extrapolating on the life of a stranger, based on the narrative implied in a YouTube video comment (side note: an entire story in Issue 14.2 is structured as a YouTube comment!). Beyond the pleasure and surprise of such a fresh occasion for poetry, “Music Indoors” makes exemplary use of lush, atmospheric imagery and a slow, lingering pace to cultivate a kind of sun-drenched, Debussy-soundtracked pocket world from which we emerge calm and smiling.
To hear Adam read his poem, click below:
Music Indoors
“my Grandma plays this to her plants”
—YouTube comment on “The Best of Debussy”
It’s book one of his preludes
as she tidies the bed,
& then, downstairs, La Mer
spread like butter on toasted rye—
the kitchen so cool & clean,
the blinds freshly dusted with a cello bow.
She sings to the houseplants throughout the day
because who else is she to sing to
so deep in the woods there?—
soprano for the spider plants,
contralto for mother-in-law’s tongue.
Come winter, your grandma wraps herself
in burro’s tail & ivy, blots the aloe
dripping from her nose with sheets
of pressed bamboo. I imagine
she’s prone to naps, your grandma.
I imagine a small symphony
in each one of her stifled snores.
Adam Gianforcaro lives in Wilmington, Delaware. His poems can be found or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Little Patuxent Review, Indianapolis Review, the minnesota review, and others.
For more miCRo pieces, CLICK HERE
