Tangent II by Catherine Eaton Skinner
STEREO TIMELINE
There will never be anything
like that new stereo.
Well, maybe a first child.
No, not even that.
It arrived when I was
in the fourth grade,
a turntable, amplifier,
two speakers.
We only owned
two forty-fives,
that a sister’s boyfriend
had left behind
but my father ordered
a bunch for a penny
from the Columbia Record Club.
I didn’t know a lounge singer
from a jazz quartet
but these circular, foot-wide,
grooved vinyl discs
seemed as precious
as the photographs
and souvenirs on the mantel.
Indeed, my mother dusted them
just as regularly,
as deliberately,
impressed on me the importance
of only ever holding those
records by the rim,
like it was the 11th commandment.
The 12th was to always
drop the needle gently
into the outer groove.
I was raised on “A Hard Day’s Night”
and a Henry Mancini disk
with a slight skip
at the beginning of “Moon River.”
I’d sit beside those speakers
like Nipper the dog
in the RCA ads.
I didn’t understand the technology,
just the magic of sounds,
rich and detailed,
nothing at all like the tinny noise
of the television.
I could tell my life story
in terms of music,
from the midget stereo
for my own room
and my personal record collection,
to bigger setups
in my own apartment, car,
and finally, house,
to an album overflow
that needed the cellar for storage,
with a few cassettes and 8 tracks
thrown in
and then CD’s and digital
and computers and a selection
of various favorites
corralled on a thumb drive.
Volume and treble,
balance and bass –
getting back to children,
those have been mine.
And, when I die
I’ll ditch the funeral march
for something with a beat,
a riff, a melody.
Pick any gravestone
you want
but that’s my epitaph
right there.
About the author:
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.
In the artist’s words:
Catherine Eaton Skinner (Seattle/Santa Fe) illuminates the balance of opposites, reflecting mankind’s attempts at connection. Skinner has an extensive global museum/gallery exhibition history, including Pie Projects, Las Cruces Museum: Branigan Cultural Center and upcoming International Art Museum of America. 150+ publications have featured her work. Radius Books published her monograph 108.