artwork: ralph murre
by
James Reiss
A man
wets his forefinger with his tongue and holds
up a
perfect water glass, empty and glistening.
He is
sitting at a table in a large
hall
with other men in identical blue
blazers
with eagle medallions over their breast pockets.
Now the
first man fingers the glass
rim,
tentatively, as if it were jagged-edged.
And now
he strokes it clockwise, slowly, stopping
to wet
his finger again and again, like an old
man
paging through a book—until the glass
comes
to life with a thin, high whine like nothing
he has
ever heard, and the others look up in amazement, catching
on,
holding up their glasses, too, wetting and stroking
them
clockwise like ice skaters in unison.
All the
glasses are coming to life now; their throats are
slowly
catching fire, glistening with a thinner,
higher
whine than any bird. It is like a pitch
pipe
with wings. It is something like the music each
man
heard when he stepped outside at night
for the
first time alone as a boy. Then
there
was nothing in the sky but stars and music.
And the
sky was like glass.
~ first
published in The New Yorker
