The vinyl noise floor of a 78
sound of an enflamed red curtain
opening to an audience of ghosts filling the black air
A piano primes the ether
in an imagined drawing room
All these years this song was launched
in bass throat cannons
To hear it aloft, living
through her and winged
Her voice symphonic and vowel elegant
She acts for the ears, somehow
Listen as she sweeps up onto her toes
for the name Moses
Her mouth a begging bowl of blood
The power lines of her voice
nearly snapping
before collapsing on
the fainting couch of the word: Pharaoh
She must engage her entire body—
pulling sound up from the earth’s core
to shower in sparks from her throat
The pianist hurries through their solo
“Get back to the story”, they seem to play
Marian’s voice obliges
The piano ascends and cascades in swelling waves
unable to find or maintain a melody
equal to the vocalist
who attempts, with her voice,
to spin the sun on its axis like a dime
The pianist races up and down the scale
sweating, exasperated
before returning us to the warm hail
of crackling vinyl– a sound like bubbles in a flute of champagne
She must sing with her eyes
I need to see her eyes I must see her eyes
I see them everywhere
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