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"Making Music" & "Harp in the Corner" by Karen Pierce Gonzalez



Making music


He hated losing her.

Like his clarinet, she’d felt good in his hands. But when he learned she’d hid his invitation to apprentice with a European master, he wet his lips and blew her out the door until the musical score of his heart no longer heard her melody.

Out of breath, he wiped down the flared bell of his single-reed woodwind and readied himself to wait out the inevitable echo of her once wide-swinging vibrato. He knew that over time, with practice, it would flatten.



Harp in the corner


Jack’s retelling of his triumphant climb-up-and-down a spindly bean stalk is the tale she wants to

tell. In her version, boy-sells-cow-gets-magic-beans then kidnaps her from the giant and brings her to a pitiful village where refined beauty – angel hair strings, smooth hand-carved wood – and the ability to make music when plucked, are unnoticed.


She will say it’s her—not the goose with golden eggs no one can afford—who is the mammoth sky man’s most prized possession.


“Wait until the eggs are cracked open, they’ll be empty, just like Jack’s words.”


At just the thought, she will quiver with delight and strum herself silly, even if no one is

listening.




An award-winning writer and artist, Karen Pierce Gonzalez’s poetry and prose have  appeared in numerous publications. Her chapbooks: Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs (Kelsay Books), True North, Sightings from a Star Wheel (Origami Poems Project). Forthcoming: Down River with Li Po (Black Cat Poetry Press), and Moon kissed, Earth wrought, Vision drunk (North American publisher).

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