Jim scores beer bottles, taps out a raw
edge, uses jeweler’s rouge to smooth down

a perfectly good drinking glass.
He stows them under his porch
and they shiver and chime long

after the train clamors by. His wife
Grace saves empty

plastic bags, washes them out,
and drapes them around her house.
She cracks windows

to let the breeze rustle them
into the sound of being hushed.

Two houses down, John with Navy tattoos
bought a toupée when Claire died. Now
he’s on Sara’s porch.

They sit for hours, her cloud-eyed
poodle asleep in a basket at their feet.

Every morning I follow tracks
to an abandoned house that groans
when the train hammers past.

This morning I went inside
and a dull throbbing pulsed beneath

my feet. I found myself
lying on the warped boards just to feel
the ruin in my spine.

–Patty Paine,
The Sounding Machine (2012)
Accents Publishing

More from Patty Paine:

• “Vantage” by Patty Paine
• “Restore” by Patty Paine
• “Ars Poetica” by Patty Paine

Patty Paine is the author of Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and many other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal, and is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and is assistant director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.