cowbells collect the evening

 

Cowbells collect the evening. We are pulled

to the bare kitchen bulb like large moths,
while milking-shed cats curl into straw.

At a rosewood table in a paneled room
middle-aged men in wide leather chairs
sip twenty-year-old single-malt scotch.

Under the white kitchen light
clover honey melts into biscuits;
nobody is starving; nobody weeps.

The men in their nail-studded armchairs
caress their knuckles and nod their chins,
quite certain they have never been wrong.

The chorus of cowbells ka-bong rattle-rattle,
the chorus of crystal shot glasses set down,
chorus of moths beating powdered wings,

while out by the bins behind the Club
a woman who stole one sharpened pencil
is carving this song into her skin.

-Penelope Scambly Schott

Incidental Music for the 6:00 pm news

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