Adam Valentine
Cleaning Music

In summer we'd play
music and clean house

and the TV picked up ESPN
real fuzzy, but if we watched

the reflection on the oven
door, the picture got clear,

and we could see the game.
We'd turn off the sound

and choose a record,
and listen to it and listen

to it, like we might understand
something, how each

note splits two, cutting
away to add. But tonight

the power is off, and all
we hear is the unsplit note

of locusts calling
back to their shells.

_ _

Adam Valentine writes poems and roams the woods in western Kentucky.

>> Back to Issue 20, 2017