Jukeboxing

John A. Nieves

Sick with the end of the song, the piano’s last string

finds stillness: the way a body makes silence. But these

bodies, dancing on the bodies of pines that themselves

once danced on the ridge line, are not still but are doing

their best imitation of silence: something no living

thing can ever own. At home, you are fingering a safety-

pin. Please remember it is not a weapon, but a tool

for holding. Here, the piano is singing again and the girls

are spinning. They rely so much on choreography—a myth

that dies at the door, that never follows anyone home

*

really. You and I have the same

visions. They are sparkles

on an old sidewalk, fresh sewn

hems, coffee roasted so

slowly the beans still think

they are fresh. We cradle

books like kittens and we are

afraid to get sick. Classic

cars are dying every day. Memories are

becoming whatever

is next, perhaps an entanglement

twenty hours and hundreds

of arc seconds

*

apart. Apart does not mean not together,

but far. Far does not know its own name. It does not

recognize that tiny syllable or lejos or weit

or daleko or lontana. The radio says to drop

our arms. Our arms are open. It is no small thing

to welcome closeness, to take a risk to see

how different a new closeness can be. The sun

rubs the street raw of its paint, but we can find

the road still. We can sense or learn north

and divine all other directions, no matter

*

the height. Small moments

can add up to so much. Words

can hem whole months together.

In this we can learn what faith

means without a god, how much

care can be had nightly, can be

invented, transmogrified, made

into music or stone or cloth. Gauzy

curtains keep privacy but not light.

We can choose what leaves, what

stays even as we move. We can

choose we. We can.

Image © Europeana

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John A. Nieves is Associate Professor of English at Salisbury University and an Editor of The Shore Poetry His poems are forthcoming or recently published in journals such as American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, swamp pink, 32 Poems and Alaska Quarterly Review. He won a Pushcart Prize in 2025. His first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize.