Zach Savich

 

Serenade

In the painting by Degas, the dancer is not
on a cell phone, but holding her head. I left the museum.
Ann was sick. There were shoes all along the bridge,
and the senseless branching of ambulance sirens: one going west
on Henderson, another east. Technicolor weather. A man
in white coveralls was carrying a traffic cone
over his head, he was an Elmer's glue tube.
In the painting of terns on rigging,
when you remove the terns from the rigging, there is
only canvas behind, not sky. Ann vomited
off the bridge, the way a single page can slide
from its binding. It became harder for me to read on
in the biography, knowing there is no part of the body
a bullet hasn't pierced. Piercework. I worked in a chowder house
and got to bring home all the innards we extracted
from bread bowls. I had a friend who was a trumpet player
who'd come home from a show and, sleepless, play more.
His apartment was so small, his trumpet
stuck into the alley. Ann slept for two or three months.
Snow like tissue after tissue pulled from a box.
I drove Ann to the hospital. On the first day of spring I saw
the Elmer's man standing on the traffic cone point
of his head at a rave. Trees blossomed outside the hospital
the way champagne bottles christen ships. I wheeled Ann
to the museum and we watched the Indian out front
raise his arms to weather. I talked about the Caravaggios
facing each other in Santa Maria del Popolo, the pose
of Paul, receiving, so close to the pose of Peter,
received; saints open their arms. Pieced through.
My friend the trumpet player emptied his spit valve onto pigeons.
He watched a woman climb onto her fire escape, nude,
her husband cursing from the window. I gave up on
the biography. I left the rave. Ann held her head.
The ambulances were just roaming, moving things around.
I put on some shoes I found on the bridge, then left the bridge.
Ann bruised. Her mom showed up. It was July.