Going Concern

Dean Young

First published in Salt Hill 32 (2014).

On a busy street full of thriving shops,
one used musical instrument store
that was never open, its windows
growing more opaque with dust. A trumpet
in an open velvet case like a general
about to order attack from the grave,
something slightly smaller than a tuba
slightly tarnished and somehow balanced
and a violin, its strings taut enough
to snap at any second. Maybe a few
more or less dead flies. Week after
week, I passed, carrying my blank books
and dog food and wine then one spring day
while the snow was coming down hard
and the light was still gone early,
I thought, this can’t go on much longer.
It didn’t.

Dean Young was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and received his MFA from Indiana University. The most recent of his several collections of poetry is Solar Perplexus (2019). He has also written a book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction (2010).