La Vie en Rose

By JEFF McRAE 

 

We scraped the Mississippi
mud
off our old piano and father 

blew his solos out the open window 
and over the meadow 

and mother made me strut
with her double-stops, drum sticks 

in hand, the old rhythms
of everything I hadn’t learned 

but was sure I heard bouncing
off the mountains in my head. 

Fleas marched across
the saint-filled rug. It wasn’t 

sorrowful to travel somewhere
new, that’s what the music said.  

I was moved—some nights
unsure where here was. 

Beale Street? Indiana? I lived
five miles outside town, 

cow piss in my boot.
My splash cymbal ached to punch 

the end of every tune.
We shook hands and I shivered 

with joy—it was real, 
living, our family band.

 

Jeff McRae‘s poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, Salamander, Cloudbank, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and many other publications. He has poems forthcoming in I-70 Review, Rattle, Permafrost Magazine, and elsewhere. He lives in Vermont.

[Purchase Issue 22 here.]

La Vie en Rose

Related Posts

Image of an orange cupped in a hand

May 2023 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

TIMOTHY DONNELLY
Thorn-blossom! Tender thing, prone to solitude / like yours truly, don’t get it twisted if I reach out my hand— / it isn’t to pluck you, who are my beacon down this path, but a gesture / of acknowledgment common among my kind. / When the lukewarm breezes nod off

Red Lanterns in Night Sky

On Wariness

MYRONN HARDY
There is rhythm on the pavement. / There is rhythm in small / apartment rooms. / I’m over slicing tomatoes. / I’m over drinking wine. / I’m performing as not to be / deformed     as not / to show what I shouldn’t. / I don’t want to feel everything.

Image of two blank canvases on a white wall

Nina and Frida Enter the Chat

FELICE BELLE
these biddies with their deadbolt backs/ take naps / while i construct/ canvas from corset cast / art does not wait until you are well / what they did not understand—the training was classical / chopin, motherfuckers/ carry on like she some backwater bluesy / least common denominator