Richard Tayson

My right hand, alive again, separates me from now. But somewhere between close the wound and drown in love’s debris, skin comes back to feel the hook of chorus reach through glass to pull the song and the boney kid closer. Rubbery appendage and flexible, not like legs or hands. It pulses with electricity, separate as a doll part. Detachable; if my hand pulls too hard at the root of his flush, off he’ll swivel, clean as a Barbie leg. There is his face to consider: turning a shade of unripe plum, especially when he palms my head and I taste what seems wet Gumby. Closes his eyes, but not like when I hear women sing. More like concentration, a bearing down. And though housebound, we’re not alone. Leaning on shag against his father’s console are James Taylor’s suspended grin, Carole King’s eyes framed by frizzed hair curtain, the Moody Blues’ white-haired mystic holding crystals by a gold thread that illuminates the mesmerized boy. Sound illuminates me, globed and engoldened, before a crowd that includes Joni Mitchell and the Partridge clan—a public of Greg’s making. The glass door opens and famous faces watch me slide into dark matter. Vale of shadow, odor of Wolf, wet leaf rot was the soaked smell of chlorinated boy. Singer’s sorrow, the saddest piano I’ve ever heard behind her, and a muzzle nuzzling my front. I wanted to hide behind song, but Wolf barred motility. As Greg’s face morphed into Oregon farmboy, song and leaf stench merged—and I’m pouring Pellegrino for two men in sports jackets (tweed? crocodile green?) and a woman bedecked in (black?) silk, guests of Carly Simon.