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bel 
 
 
I 
 
 
bottom 
 
 
blues 
 
 
 
 
                    Claire  Allen 
 
 
e's got his guitar face on when I get home from work. It's kind of scary
the first 
time you see it, a trance induced by acoustic strings, his facial muscles
limp 
and his eyes barely visible under half-moon lids. The pupils, if you catch
them, 
are absolutely fixated on a floor tile or a discarded toy, and I imagine
his gaze 
boring a hole into the ground. I think he channels all his energy into his
ears 
 
 
and his fingers and lets everything else go slack. Sometimes his jaw hangs
open a little, too, 
like he's fresh from the dentist and can't feel the drip-drip of spittle
escaping from Novocain 
lips. When he picks up a guitar, he's in that trance as soon as his fingers
hit the fret. I love 
him so much, I'm usually there with a washcloth, dabbing up that spittle
drip, while he just 
keeps playing. 
   Today I don't have a clean washcloth so I just stand in the doorway to
the screen porch and 
watch him. It's a beautiful evening, humid, and behind him the air is thick
with color from the 
setting sun. He's got a slow, melodic "Blackbird" going, playing
that song like a caress, and I 
close my eyes and pretend to feel it on my left cheek, where the breeze hits.

   "Beatles," I say. We have a game. 
   He doesn't look up. "Song," he mumbles, under his breath. He
has a theory that I only 
know artists and not actual songs or compilations. I am in the midst of dispelling
this theory 
and spend many late nights perusing his records, memorizing titles and tracks.
Our game is 
slightly misleading; it is less play and more scrutiny. I wish to be so good
at it that he breaks 
out of that face when I first reach the screen porch, ready to absorb his
music, before he 
thinks to conduct a trial. 
   "Blackbird," I say. 
   He raises his eyebrows slightly, so briefly that it could be a twitch,
in appreciation. Then 
he raises them again, longer, to indicate that I should keep going. 
   "It's on-" I stop, sifting through the covers in my mind: there
they are, the infamous four, 
crossing the street; there they are in a collage of sketched faces and photographic
images.. .no, 
not Rubber Soul.. .and then the pure blank space comes to mind. "The
White Album." 
   "Disk?" 
   I pause. 
   "Track number?" he says softly, in a breath. "Composer?"

 
 
"I'm still in the 
doorway and he's on 
the porch swing, and 
the space between 
us is the length of his 
Martin and full with 
a silent, dissonant 
music." 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Literature 
 
 
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