John Amen
John Amen is the author of several collections of poetry, including Illusion of an Overwhelm (New York Quarterly Books, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Award, and work from which was chosen as a finalist for the Dana Award. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in journals nationally and internationally, and his poetry has been translated into Spanish, French, Hungarian, Korean, and Hebrew. He is a Staff Reviewer for the music magazines and websites No Depression, Beats Per Minute, and PopMatters. He founded and is managing editor of Pedestal Magazine.
Usually when I recall you
–May 3, for Richard
You’re slumped under a pear tree playing a dented horn.
Sharp phrases steam in the grass, G scale like the moan
of Judas, your mangled A minor wail the death of crows
by thirst. Today I pictured you laughing in the heavy rain,
instrument tucked under your shirt. I’d like to remember
you like that, not yield to what always echoes next, that
staccato blast in the pawnshop, a cop calling at three in the
morning. Did a powder-blue opus mushroom in your skull?
A one-note solo that fired the angels into madness? Did
you lift your eyes to behold a sky filled with red starlings?
But then, music was a language you never mastered, this
poem is simply tableau, psychodrama, a brother baptizing
himself in metaphors, splashing the smoke from his eyes.
This is how a silent, blaring day unfolds two + years later.
©2021 West Trade Review
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