Sonata So Nada
Raleigh Walter
1.) This was before (after Ravi Mangla)
this was before scope, before a bagel, before the notepad and a grandparent, before the grasshoppers, before incarnation, before satin had become a mix of the alphabet and a roast, before the bulldozer, before the time you called yourself a bonus, before the time your father called you a tomb, before aliens, before noon, before the step-mother with her muskrat in her fine shoulder purse, before a footprint, before a lie, before the tonic that knots inside of you, before the chateau that was only filled from doorway to doorway with clovers, before hard-hats, before frequency, before stumbling into your bed, before dreams of principles and urges haunted between your sheets, this was before all of that, when your instructor grilled you. which kind do you want to be? the father-in-law or the alcohol in your bloodstream? the plantation or the platinum? now think back to abacus, activity, ascend, asset, the auditorium where you stuttered and made a goddamn fool of yourself, saint, slide, store, mattress in the medium of your mouth, passion in your picturesque cobble fuck, eat the cartilage in your conviction the cost of your conviction, effect is an illusion and your love is both, back to booty calls and backups and backpacks with my little ponies on them, back to when twins were created in testttttttttttttubes, back to alfalfa, back to exaggeration, back to the gear that made jellybeans and pies, back to the recipe of my birth, back to clavicles, back to cots and gins, back to the doorpost, back to the republic and the empire satires, and shoes think back to when you thought you were a bottom and when coal was a good resource, back to the marksman, back to partridges, prevention, ptarmigan, and pumpernickel bagels with holes, back to collections of corn and counterfeit feelings. before my country broke my heart and I had to staple it back together again. But that was before I watched the tempest.
2.) A rose is a rose is a rose (after Gertrude Stein)
a manufacturer is a signup is an indication is fate is a square is an inheritance is a hymn is core is truth
squares are squares that fit in a box, which I’ve placed myself in because I didn’t like sharing my dinosaurs at recess. “she doesn’t play with anyone but her brother and that’s going to stifle her.” too late bitch.
is a blade is livestock is instinct is a bucket is an adjustment is a restriction is a jackal is a fir is a dresser
men are viewed as jackals, and i am the livestock. a slaughterhouse in my own backyard and don’t care when the bullet gun comes to my head. at least my little sister will sleep on sheepskin and be warm.
is a prostanoid is an ale is an excursion is a joke is a pole is a balcony is advertising is a bungalow is a decoder
i’ve always been good at jokes. “very dry humor.” yet, I’ll say someone to my lover,
something quick and pensive. and as if his mind was filled with ale, he will remain
quiet and still. i am nothing like a machine and to decode a man is something I
haven’t been programmed to do so. my dry humor and I. What women are we?
is a mother is chard is a soprano is a cost is coke is a thesis about goats is guacamole is an opponent
a mother. i’ve always wanted to be a mother. look into their eyes and see my grandfather,
my mother, me. i want a baby but I don’t want to give birth. to have myself spill onto
the table, that’s not a cost I am fond of. when I was young, I used to wish that I could
have a surrogate, another woman to hold them. but I’ve never been good with
opponents. a competition.
is a POP is a batter is a zoot-suit is an ancestor is a dreamer is a male is an instant skill is a repayment
POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP
POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP
POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP
POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP
is what I started to call my father after he lost his job.
is a train is a queen is an interpreter is underweight is a puppy is a pickax is a reindeer is a processor of bowl skulls is a camel with
tanks on it’s back is a boutique is malnutrition is a waist is a neon is testing logic against pathogenesis is a strap is a rhinoceros is a
silicon dead kingfish is an assassination is smog is a comma reporter is a selection of cartoon tactics and seals and murder and cake
and disparity and emus and earrings is a page is left is a mainstream movie about blue lesbians.
3.) Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74
I have no idea why it got so dark and then you told me what happened to Tchaikovsky 6 days later and it makes sense why it felt very sad to me
made me think it was star wars almost, something about the grandness of it.
plucking up and down the strings makes me uneasy. anxious.
now it’s taken a turn, becoming very loud, it’s like a dance couple just spinning and spinning
gets loud and soft and loud and soft and loud and soft
the music almost doesn’t know what to be, sweet or loud or maybe that’s the whole point.
it’s like a tragedy, something will slice us open and we won’t be aware of it because of the girls dancing in the
background.
it’s like the murder of a swan??? tying the neck into a knot so you can’t hear the horns.
it’s this mix of hope and dreary love, loud is the smothering of the first two months and the quiet is like the subtle realization that things aren’t perfect and that not everyone has a perfect soulmate that they were meant for and that you make people and you make yourself and you decide how you want to spend the rest of your life, not a piece of music.
I want to save the swan. WHY SO LOUD?
I can’t read music, I know p and f and which line section to look at but sight-reading means nothing to me.
now it sounds like the man has buried the swan at the bottom of a hill, only a tear rolling down the side of his cheek and he will scrub the dirt off his hands and he will shove them back in his pocket and he will forget about the swan until he wakes with his down comforter ripped open and spewing the cream-colored feathers of the birds he has never met.
very triumphant, as if screaming or praising and I’m not sure which would come first. the dancing couple is back and it’s almost like it’s their first dance all over again. yet, we see them throw each other to the ground again again again again again again. I see red, yellow, orange, it feels final. over and done to the last drop.