Handouts photograph by MARINO ORLANDI
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT BY MICHAEL BRONSTEIN
When I was young, our stone gate bore bleak words one might find in rock---Devil's music. On bone dry grass, our hound, all black save two full moons opposing each other on his neck like scars of amputations, growled soulfully.
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Surrounded by black-iron banisters, my father punished me as he always did: he placed a circle of silver beneath my tongue to give from mouth to man who ferried me, in slow strokes, to beg forgiveness at the graves of those who came before. I'm glad my father's dead. The gate is gravel now, strewn among green grass. I put the dog down decades ago, I reminisced as I looked, in pensive bliss, upon the white arches of my hair that overlook my clouded eyes, and I thought of that youthful journey that I would soon repeat. Damn. The old man's dead, but he's not gone. The score of life: measures bearing colons before bars. Devil's music.