Ballad from the Soundhole of an Unstrung Guitar
by 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.

#poem #poetry #literature