Gibson

The day you bought the Gibson,
the Allen boy held me face-down in sand.
I choked, and you shouted,
Get up, son, and kick his ass,
or I’m gonna put a whuppin’ on yours.
I wrestled free, and he ran.
I wanted to run, too,
but I was gagging
and knew I’d have to come back
to you anyway.

You took that guitar home
and beat the hell out of
the three chords you knew.
It sustained decades of battles
between you and your women—
drunken nights, fists, divorce—
and soared with your enemies’ misfortunes.

Then you smashed off a finger,
cut off another,
but refused to release the guitar
to me even as I became better
than you had ever dreamed of being.
Then that second wife, getting back
for difficult days and impossible nights,
nagged until you gave it up.

Its strident tone’s never mellowed,
and I’m weary of its piercing melody.
Twice it’s reached close of sale
only for the buyer to back out.
For one, it was too subdued;
for another, “it doesn’t speak to me.”
Its battered body does speak, though.
Sometimes, it screams.


C.S. Fuqua’s books include White Trash & Southern ~ Collected Poems, The Swing ~ Poems of Fatherhood, Walking after Midnight ~ Collected Stories, the SF novel Big Daddy’s Fast-Past GadgetHush, Puppy! A Southern Fried Tale (children’s), and Native American Flute Craftamong others. His work has appeared in publications such as Year’s Best Horror Stories XIX, XX and XXIPudding, Pearl, Chiron Review, Christian Science Monitor, Slipstream, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, The Writer, and Honolulu Magazine.