Here too a pure identity reigns between the form
of the record disc and that of the world in which it plays.
—Theodor Adorno
My father sailing my oldest sister’s LP
out her bedroom window was an act of such
startling violence and beauty that, even now,
I equivocate over its veracity, wonder whether
I witnessed it happen or whether it was just
an idle threat bellowed up the stairwell,
an ultimatum contingent on the condition of her room,
his voice t-boning the vector of Robert Plant’s
reverberating climax. And she, barricaded behind
her blacklights, cowering inside the cage of her black
and white oversized houndstooth wallpaper, tortured
defiance in the backup vocals of her sobbing.
Was that the carpet-muffled thunder of ascent?
Did he ram a shoulder through her door
or did she let him in? Is it plausible
that, after dislocating the tonearm from its socket,
he gently remated the record with its cover?
Was it the telemetry of childhood I studied over
our lawn and blossoming orchard, daffodils past
their prime, that aborted capsule veering earthward,
shedding its booster, music leaving the sleeve?
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 2.
Ralph Sneeden’s poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, The Common, Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, The Surfer’s Journal, and many other magazines. The title poem of his book, Evidence of the Journey (Harmon Blunt, 2007), received the Friends of Literature Prize from POETRY magazine/Poetry Foundation. Born in Los Angeles, he has lived in New England for many years and teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. His most recent collection, Surface Fugue (EastOver Press, 2021) won the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s Best Poetry Book of the Year Award.See all items about Ralph Sneeden
