Notes fell into my fedora in
Too poetic of a way
Too synonymous with a busker I
Once knew
Once was
And his
panhandled songs
Stolen from places
And books and letters and the corners of my mind where music stood at corners
begging
As if there is such a thing as too poetic or too musical or too big of a fedora stuffed with first
notes and last notes and echo notes and silent notes and end-notes
Left behind by no crowd and all crowds and crowded crowds and invisible crowds
Maybe there is and
maybe there is not but the double f alliteration that rhymes with clef and marches next together
in fell and fedora
Almost made me laugh
But I didn’t
Instead
I inhaled
One more time my notes that smelled of music and sadness and grief and crescendos and
whole notes and half notes and
scribbled idea notes on napkins and marble slabs and cocktail umbrellas and gray matter
Not of a million fingerprints on faded dollars left in hats and boxes and musty violin cases
I hummed a dirge
of faded songs
That made no one laugh
And
left my fedora empty
Amy Barnes has words at a variety of publications including McSweeney’s, Parabola, Detritus Online, Guideposts, The New Southern Fugitives, Gnashing Teeth Anthology, FlashBack Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine and Maria at Sampaguitas. She is a reader for CRAFT and Narratively and Associate CNF Editor for Barren Magazine.
