…And Transfiguration
The classical LP your mother let you to pick daily—
just one—for the twenty minutes you were home
to eat deviled ham on white sliced into two equal
triangles: you chose Death and Transfiguration
by Strauss because of the title, because you wanted
to understand what “transfiguration” meant—and
the death part didn’t seem so scary: just violins
and back to sixth grade in the green Ford. You didn’t
get in trouble for not eating your crusts. Your mom
never asked you why you kept picking that record.
The illuminated clock face in the movie theatre on
Cape Cod—movies were ninety minutes long and it
was good to look at the clock when someone was
about to get shot, which frightened you more than
you knew how to explain. That death seemed real.
The pleasant, autumnal smell of cigarette smoke
when the Democrats lost another election but their
victory party was at your house anyway—more
laughter than there should have been, only a few
of the fathers from your neighborhood. Mostly
people you didn’t know, amber bottles of Scotch.
Your father’s voting lists. Your little sister smiling
at everything except when she quietly and politely
wept, which everyone found adorable. The day
someone finally shot the President. Three dead days
afterwards. Your father watching TV, John-John and
Caroline in all that blue glimmering—children your age.
Christine Potter is the poetry editor of Eclectica Magazine. She has recently had poems curated by Rattle, Cloudbank, SWIMM, ONE ART, Consequence, The McNeese Review, Does It Have Pockets, Pictura, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her time-traveling young adult novels, The Bean Books, are published by Evernight Teen and her latest poetry collection, Unforgetting, is on Kelsay Books. She lives with her husband and chonky cat Bella in a very old house in the Hudson River Valley.