Noah Stetzer

That Old Song

The sixteen-wheeler—hit head on by the left front corner
of your father’s car—jack-knifed and exploded: chain reaction
into seven more cars, seven drivers; a piled-up, four-lane
interstate shutdown; six hours under helicopter cameras.

You might think that there was music and, watching the rear
view mirror, his eyes went off the road and went instead
to where he’d been: an image in front of behind, the highway
bending the other way.

And one time coming home late, you found him with his eyes closed
on the couch, the stereo speakers clicking with a record long past over;
and while you watched his eyes opened and looked right at you
because he knew all along where to find you.

The officer’s handwriting says initial impact point 11 o’clock — Driver
One visibly deceased in car — ref. photo three where there’s a picture
in a file, in a box, on a shelf, in a dark room, behind a door no one
ever thinks about

— where you might find him listening again to his old records:
this one never goes out of style and that turning ticking sound
of the needle’s useless spinning.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Noah Stetzer is the author of Because I Can See Needing a Knife (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). His Pushcart-nominated poems have appeared in the New England Review, Nimrod International Journal of Prose & Poetry, Green Mountains Review, Bellevue Literary Review and other journals. He has been a fellow of the Lambda Literary Retreat and a work-study scholar at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Noah lives in Kansas City and can be found online at www.noahstetzer.com.