RICHARD RYAL
In Case of Earthquake
Last time you shook this much, you cried yourself dull, into a bell with no tone. You once dreamt you were falling and the earth fell with you, then you woke to find your bed trying to escape you. That is this.
Hold tight to a table rattling its servings out of time with the band onstage. Window frames squeeze, their panes billow outward, paintings jump on the walls but can’t touch the ceiling.
A bass line locks into the rumble below, the spill of horn players drags their riffs into the drum kit. Everyone here is a nerve ending. The crowd has no tolerance for its own hunger.
Everything underfoot becomes leaves in the air. Float your weight back and forth between your feet over the pop of continental knuckles.
Sail the city, it’s becomes an armada of architecture plowing the swells and troughs riding deep strata. Give up the dream, the one about being solid. When stone confuses itself with the wind that rolls across it, remember how much water you are. Ripple where you stand.
Your dancing suddenly doubled, the rolling floor scuffs your shoes. From every side, quarrels, chairs in flight.
A cross beam squeals between its ends. The steel yawns up and down the scale of a song the land composes on the spot. Refuse the broken sounds. Don’t listen. This is no new song. You would cover your ears but your hands are raised too far, forearms bent against the weariness of walls.
The steel that holds the floors apart starts to recall its mineral past, an underground ease.
The way through earthquakes, she says, you raise your heels, weight forward on the toes. When tentacle cracks ripple around you, let the gaps circle your axis.
You can try to land on a moving boat, make your stand on spring ice in the rain, shave without a mirror. You’re a sail blown free from its mast, an idea you quickly forget, a chair dislodged from the place of honor.
The floor is flowing. The compression here springs apart the nearby. Follow.
In Case of Silence
Keep your feet and hips still, let your lungs stir the air like a ghost spoon. Most of all, know the need to go nowhere yet, wait for a small split in the world, let it show you what it has.
Look up. Farther. The fattening sky settles closer. If you’re standing, sit. If sitting, stand.
The world’s orchestras—symphony, gamelan, dance—performers, conductors, patrons, ushers—wait for a cue not yet here to play the first note.
This is no time to beat on the vault that hides your memory, to act surprised when mockingbirds humiliate you with an unwritten history of song.
Your lips have lost the names for anything though the voice in your skull screams without pausing for breath though you’ll never have proof. Last night you thought you heard the fall of windless snow but skies remain dry and muffled. Walk upstairs without hearing the wood steps groan your exact weight.
Look in this window. Musicians still practice. They can’t hear the notes rowed like eggs in their heads but they remember where their fingers go, where scales and chords lay. They palm their instruments, this is what they know to do.
Listen for something that won’t catch you listening. In total darkness, know your heartbeat by resting your wrist against your fingertips. Push your ears against this calm, try to budge its mass. When you finish, pick up the shadow you cast, try, it’s lighter than dry skin you peel after a day in the sun.
The way through silence, she says, burrows through traffic, walks the greasy portside, crosses the railroad yard track by track. A fuse burns along your kitchen floor, an itch rises the inside of your leg. Whatever you do, don’t scratch but don’t deny the urge.
Jump high and hard again and again on everything in the drum room of the music store. You now live in a specialized hollow. Kick the metal barrel down the concrete stairs to the rocks behind your house at the ocean’s side. It wouldn’t stir a jewel thief in hiding, a hungry baby, an angry parrot. Go home and listen for the blade’s roar through the mushrooms on the cutting board. Listen all you want.
Cup your ears so your hands echo their shape.
Keep your feet and hips still, let your lungs stir the air like a ghost spoon. Most of all, know the need to go nowhere yet, wait for a small split in the world, let it show you what it has.
Look up. Farther. The fattening sky settles closer. If you’re standing, sit. If sitting, stand.
The world’s orchestras—symphony, gamelan, dance—performers, conductors, patrons, ushers—wait for a cue not yet here to play the first note.
This is no time to beat on the vault that hides your memory, to act surprised when mockingbirds humiliate you with an unwritten history of song.
Your lips have lost the names for anything though the voice in your skull screams without pausing for breath though you’ll never have proof. Last night you thought you heard the fall of windless snow but skies remain dry and muffled. Walk upstairs without hearing the wood steps groan your exact weight.
Look in this window. Musicians still practice. They can’t hear the notes rowed like eggs in their heads but they remember where their fingers go, where scales and chords lay. They palm their instruments, this is what they know to do.
Listen for something that won’t catch you listening. In total darkness, know your heartbeat by resting your wrist against your fingertips. Push your ears against this calm, try to budge its mass. When you finish, pick up the shadow you cast, try, it’s lighter than dry skin you peel after a day in the sun.
The way through silence, she says, burrows through traffic, walks the greasy portside, crosses the railroad yard track by track. A fuse burns along your kitchen floor, an itch rises the inside of your leg. Whatever you do, don’t scratch but don’t deny the urge.
Jump high and hard again and again on everything in the drum room of the music store. You now live in a specialized hollow. Kick the metal barrel down the concrete stairs to the rocks behind your house at the ocean’s side. It wouldn’t stir a jewel thief in hiding, a hungry baby, an angry parrot. Go home and listen for the blade’s roar through the mushrooms on the cutting board. Listen all you want.
Cup your ears so your hands echo their shape.
Copyright © February 2023 Richard Ryal
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A poet, professor, and editor, Richard Ryal has worked in marketing and higher education. He stops for no obvious reason sometimes and no one can talk him out of that. His recent publications include Notre Dame Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and The South Florida Poetry Journal.
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