Dan Fliegel
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hoping you could make a manual sound

​both universal and instrumental
you practiced paradiddles but used words
“like music [to] communicate feeling”
terrence hayes wrote as a trumpet muted
not to euthanize or to stupefy
the blizzard in Utah descending steps
like humanity with a human in [it]

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If you listen while riding on busses

for something that buzzes, isn’t that some
form of prayer? Churches always in the news
for the wrong reasons. Misery kisses
the cheeks of select citizens only.
Meanwhile, your unlikely visit to the
prison near town brings a realization:
The business of prisons is misery.

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Churches might only mean realization.

Maybe there is nothing more bizarre than
believing           in pauses. If you listen
while riding on busses for something that
buzzes, isn’t that some form of prayer? When
misery cast its shadow through ages,
there was born the business of belief. Then
barkers came along, invented show biz.

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Dan Fliegel lives and teaches in Chicagoland. His chapbook, How Music Works On Us, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag in late 2023. Poems are published in Adirondack Review, African American Review, Cold Mountain Review, Free State Review, The South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. He is the poetry editor for TriQuarterly.