Two Poems by Alan Michael Parker

Family Music

In the dream I have of my mother,
I take her hand in both of mine,
but hers isn’t actually a hand.

We’re long-lost chums in a recording studio
where the drum kit’s ruined,
the snares and bass a heap of cans.

I want to bang on something.
In her eyes, a sunrise,
time to go, and so

I ask my dead mother,
To find you, what should I sing?
Even in death, she won’t say.

Top Hat and Tails

It’s the moment in a rented tux
when you catch sight of your vanity
in the beat-up Chevy’s side-view mirror
(almost looking back, but who can see
where we have been),

adjust the pleats of the yellow cummerbund,
arms stiff in a smart shirt,
and lock the car with the clunky clicker,

then, chin down, turn yourself and aim
for the scrum of the evening gowns,

only to find it’s a softball game,
lit up and easy
in the juicy evening, in the made-up light,

and the field is the biggest bowl of candy ever,
and Mark is there, and Frank the Fixer, and Doctor Jim.
It’s a softball game, you’re on deck,
your team’s losing,
and you’re so fine in a tux.

That’s what the wrong word
in a poem is like.

Alan Michael Parker is the author of nine collections of poems, including The Age of Discovery (forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2020), and four novels. Houchens Professor of English at Davidson College, he also teaches in the University of Tampa low-residency MFA program. He can be found at www.alanmichaelparker.com.