"Methuselah Remembered" by Simon Leonard

In your kitchen it will always be late summer,

Bessie Smith churning through the blues,

some piano fluttering to keep up.

A CD whirs through its moment

of near collapse, opts to skip

over scratches — a delicate thing,

technology, so susceptible to cracks

or bumps; she hates to see

that evening sun go down. She

hates to see that evening sun go down.

A child of rationing, you recalled

scraping the last suspicion of jam

out of a wartime pot, entire focus

on mining that sweet vein trapped

in glass, music sounding

on the wireless, your feet tapping

to some sturdy melody, bombproof,

something anyone could sing to, not

to hear the evening sun go down, covering

your mouth as you said, as though

embarrassed by another generation

of dentistry, we hate

to see that evening sun go down.

Child evacuated from memory, membrane

tinged with whiskey, a mystery

of unpeeled years, ripe as nuts,

perfect in their past completeness

on a table, bare wooden back

of another time. Stains of fat

on a plastic mat must have been mine,

only because there’s no one else

left hating to see that evening sun

go down. I hate to see that

evening sun go down.

Inspired by the idea of the bumblebee, which should not be able to fly and yet does, Simon Leonard has recently discovered that, in reality, bumblebees are ok with physics. He is currently in search of a more fitting metaphor while he works on his second chapbook.