C L Bledsoe

Caricatures Can Never Be Loved

Goodbye to Noise

I hear music when I’m trying to

work. You have to understand: no one

cries for the fat man with the broken knees

smeared in banana skin, the librarian

splattered under a piano. Heads don’t turn

from the droning click of keys

to even notice the tragedy of dying

in khakis. I trap my hours in graphite,

pin their wings to the page and draw neat

lines through them when I’ve spent them.

This is how it should be, no? And yet

tell me how. I can’t even spell

the word libretto, and yet at the periphery

of my hearing, voices rise, and here I scribble.

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