Aaron Graves
George Washington's Violinist

As you push the wooden,
green-fletched endpin deper
piercing through your sandwich
like a hungry wooden
tooth that tightens strings,
your tan dress sings the room's
wooden hues, resounding,
singing the spinning song
of a thousand lunches
channeling the summer
of each voice in the room,
only to silence it

like a loosened bow.
Your teeth whittle your lunch
into words for a pyre,
your hair is two golden wings that
span the dusty bridges that raise
the restaurant's firmament.

<< Back to Issue 6, 2004