Tony Whedon
Tony Whedon’s poetry and essays have appeared in Harpers, American Poetry Review, Agni, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, and more than a hundred other magazines. He’s published a book of poems through Midlist Press, a chapbook and a full length poetry collection through Fomite Press, and is the author of A Language Dark Enough: Essays on Exile, from Midlist. He’s a working trombone player.
Dubloons
That Christmas eve
we visited the Boyds
at their house on an oyster shell
road east of Pontchatrain,
and I saw above the crab legs
piled high in the kerosene light
my mother jitterbugging
with my father, his pockets
jingling with doubloons;
I remember the sign "Boyd's Nest,"
rattling with the palmettos
beyond the mosquito silk
& the unwrapping of gifts
and spices, and my mother
whirling her tar‑colored hair
around my father, the Boyds
nervously watching.
What remains of that evening
are swatches of glittery Dorsey
and Goodman, the music skipping
beyond me and twelve‑year old Annette,
the Boyds' skinny daughter,
who in quickening darkness
led me to their cruiser tied to
the bayou dock. Later, we slipped
back to the candle‑lit porch.
She slammed the screen door,
and I felt shaken by what we'd done.
Jim Boyd was playing cards
across the room with my father.
My mother, her forehead glistening
sweat, sprawled in a butterfly chair,
and I remember my father half‑
carrying her to our red car.
Now "Boyd's Nest's" a thatch
of cheap condos; the bayou's
thick with oil rigs and Cajun
clip‑joints. Driving through it
this year, noticing the light's
little grace notes on the water,
I recalled that late 'fifties night
that smelled sweet as Jim Boyd's whisky
& my father's cheap cologne:
we glided through rain blowing off
the lake to New Orleans. My mother
slept in the crook of my father's arm,
and, even then, I was saddened by
the meticulous care, with which
I began to alter these memories.
Out of this World
I sat there awhile, nobody
but me and my wristwatch
listening, and as I waited
for the final chord to descend,
a moth lit on the rim of my glass,
its blue wings trembling.
I wanted harmony, not
cacophony, I wanted pastels
over the muddy half-tones
of a botched twilight;
I played the record
again and heard Miles
consider how to re-enter
the tune, the moment brought
to a dead stop only to
begin again. Fuck the short
form and its abbreviated joys,
and fuck the spaces
between the notes that
define him – the long ash
of a cigar, diminished,
the grapes planted years ago
that refuse to ripen. Almost
evening in California, a stellar jay
worries at an empty feeder;
the sun slips behind
the hills, and the mountains
darken as night comes on.
I put the record on again,
and when Miles plays
that phrase I swear I hear
the moth’s heart
beating helplessly
as it falls into my drink
out of this world.