Their eyes shine like stars.
Make a little piece of that.
She circled each word twice, brisk arrows like spirochetes in rearrangement.
Their stars like shining eyes.
Something.
Put it safely in a bridge.
Guitarists as a tribe, guys as a rule creamed at her invention, and she held those compliments dear, oh waxwing swoon.
D major, F sharp, G major and why not double the G from barre to open.
Her fingers tapped air and slid.
B minor to C.
Her favorite chords to solo over.
Break their hearts then drop their jaws with flash.
Eyes shine star star stars.
She stole and couldn’t remember but the rhythm of the words filled her fingertips.
Thomas?
Watkins?
Dryden?
Vaughan?
No, it was coming to her as a short pinch of a younger ‘me’.
Someone alive.
And near.
A translation to boot.
By a Canadian, once of Oxford, now of Austin.
Yes.
She’d had a crush on him, knew nothing of him, believed she could kiss the hurt from his eyes.
A Hungarian poem she would never read.
David david david.
She bent over the table, pencil moustached between her nose and upper lip.
Her feet were cold in doubled socks as she caressed the woman’s curve of the black Stratocaster, asleep in its nest of stockings and sheer underpants.
Some things are better left unsung, unplayed, unthought.
At times, the buzz of vodka or wine at flame along her veins, the drums cymbal-less and solid with detonation, the bass a pulse of pure noise, the singer letting go the microphone, withdrawing to some oval of off-center light, and everything before and after, above and below, existing in a moment of mallarmean blancheur, awaiting her first stroke, that first rise of agony or beauty, to be extended into minutes, as she pleases, … at times she can do no wrong.
Her guitar playing is her license to be a fuck-up.
On the inside of her eyelids, the lights of those she loved, the ones whose praise she’s never earned, open soundless mouths, their eyes like shining stars.