2011 pdf - International Writing Program - University of Iowa

The Last Piano
Iowa City 2011
There is only one piano
left in the pedestrian mall.
Now with the cold weather
it is growing slowly tuneless
though people still play
with gloved fingers
discordant triads like
exit music from a student film.
We are closing our accounts.
We are sending home our books.
We are wearing all of our clothes
at once, each evening scraping our plastic
chairs up to the glass-crowded table.
So long, happy-hour commiserations
about the death of narrative poetry
about the death of wonder.
Goodbye, collective dictionary of
untranslatable words, of untranslatable
concepts. Goodbye, blackened windows
of the burnt-out bagel shop.
Goodbye, baleful whalesong
of the power plant whistle, and
Iowa House fire alarm, who sang us
half-dressed into the dark October street.
There is only one piano.
We are closing our accounts.
We are sending our books home.
Josephine Rowe
IWP ‘11, Australia
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