All alone
In the kitchen
With the kids gone
The wife gone
The leaves gone
The way walls disappear
Into meadows
The way knives
Disappear
Into marigolds
Sunshine
Into debris
Of the spirit
I’m all alone
In the
Kitchen
I told my old friend Joe
The worst thing
I ever did
Was sell
My LP collection
On the street corner
When I was broke
And couldn’t
Buy an orange
They flew away
From me like
Hummingbirds
Or pigeons
Sold them from a stoop
On Dean
And there they went
Gone
Like music didn’t
Mean anything
Anymore
My friends Eric
Derek Pedro
Deanna
Dolores
Gone
My youngest kid up the block
In a Wonder Woman
Suit
And bangles
Flying from one porch
To another
With her six year old
Love interest
Judy
My eldest
At play practice
Practicing Willy Wonka
Practicing how to be
A human muscle
Of love
Against
All the greasy
Fingertips
Of 11-year-olds
Wanting touch
It’s enough to make
Me mad
Full of madness
While the washing machine
Begs me
To come downstairs
And make love
To it
As if making love to it
Will bring back
All my grooved
And scratched
Van Morrison b-sides
All my Judy Garland
Outtakes
The Red Garland
Blue Notes
All alone here
Next to the trash
My wife in Houston
Laying over
From Tucson
Where she has spent a weekend
With Laura
Dying Laura
Curled up with her
Spooned
Who will be gone
They say in two
Days
It does not matter
What day it will be
Or what the disease
People just up
And leave sometimes
The Chinese character
For gone
Is wang
Or wánle
There are so many
Ways
To say it
There were so many
Records I could not live without
Without everything
Without everyone
Needle in the groove
Skipping
###
Matthew Lippman is the author of four poetry collections: Salami Jew, American Chew (winner of The Burnside Review Book Prize), Monkey Bars, and The New Year of Yellow (winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize). He is the recipient of the 2014 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Prize and the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review.
“All My Grooved and Scratched” originally appeared in Heaven (TLR Fall 2016)