8 January 2007 | Vol. 6, No. 4

Elegy

by DAMON MCLAUGHLIN

I forgive you as I have forgiven many things,

lyrics for those dolorous blues we played, those women,

America's loneliest state.

It's been yesterday…since Cheyenne left me

on cocaine and acoustics, hopped up on jazz chords

I can't finger anymore, slinking around my blue guitar

for rhythms my hands don't realize. They fail

those bones that forge sound

inside the ear where my voice drowns, this dirge

dragging it down the way a cornfield drags crows

out of the wind to keep it light.

I should rise like a bubble in water and burst if I let it go.

Or float without effort

like a hawk whose gravity is made of sky.

But when I sing, I draw in wind, drain it through the belly

into the feet, which swell like levees about to burst.

You would know it, watching me walk, how I sing to you

with my mouth shut.