It is both: the groove, the needle.
Also the music spinning forth
and, beneath the music, the hiss.
It is the force that scatters
seeds against a window,
tapping you awake.
Later, if the roots take, it is
the back-leaning bloom.
It is the shotgun sound
the rake handle makes pounded
against the painted planks of the house,
and memory is the house.
The swarm of bees that clouds out.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 3.
Jan Bottiglieri is a freelance writer living in suburban Chicago. She is a managing editor for the literary annual RHINO and received her MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Her chapbook Where Gravity Pools the Sugar was published in 2013 and her poetry book Alloy is forthcoming from Mayapple Press in July, 2015.
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