#ballad from the soundhole of an unstrung guitar

[razorsadness]

Ballad from the Soundhole of an Unstrung Guitar

The best I ever wrote was in an attic. No chair. Manual typewriter on an upended box. No screen on the lone window, which I removed. Bats flew through.

I woke up one night and Blue was in bed with me. Nah, I said, and he put on his wire-rimmed glasses and left. Somehow, I ended up with two kittens. Littermates. I wonder how they lived and died, where they went.

The only furniture was the mattress on the floor. A wooden box full of someone's Mardi Gras beads. No ethics. No lock on the door. No worries about vermin, rabies, fleas.

Where did I pee in the middle of the night? There must have been a bathroom down those narrow stairs. A shower somewhere. A gold shower curtain laced with mold.

Blue once told me I walked in on him peeing and I laughed. That it ruined his life. Well, Jesus, I'm sorry. I would never have apologized back then.

I knew no forms. Just a swarm of bees in the rafters who agreed to leave me be. I made a line break when I took a drag on my Salem Light. Menthols were pure as poetry.

Where are the words now, that you wrote in that hellhole? On the typewriter ribbon I stuck in a knothole.

—Diane Seuss, from Modern Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2024)

[missedstations]

"Ballad from the Soundhole of an Unstrung Guitar" - Diane Seuss

The best I ever wrote was in an attic. No chair. Manual typewriter on an upended box. No screen on the lone window, which I removed. Bats flew through.

I woke up one night and Blue was in bed with me. Nah, I said, and he put on his wire-rimmed glasses and left. Somehow, I ended up with two kittens. Littermates. I wonder how they lived and died, where they went.

The only furniture was the mattress on the floor. A wooden box full of someone's Mardi Gras beads. No ethics. No lock on the door. No worries about vermin, rabies, fleas.

Where did I pee in the middle of the night? There must have been a bathroom down those narrow stairs. A shower somewhere. A gold shower curtain laced with mold.

Blue once told me I walked in on him peeing and laughed. That it ruined his life. Well, Jesus, I'm sorry. I would never have apologized back then.

I knew no forms. Just a swarm of bees in the rafters who agreed to leave me be. I made a line break when I took a drag on my Salem Light. Menthols were pure as poetry.

Where are the words now, that you wrote in that hellhole? On the typewriter ribbon I stuck in a knothole.