RYAN WALSH

THESE CHANGES ARE PERMANENT

So they came to the point
where the boy could only emit
howling falsetto tones that
sounded like records being played backwards
in the worst possible way.
Pulling his name from the spelling bee roster
and the glee club
they all drove home with a
brand new feeling of unsettlement
unpacking its bags in their hearts and heads.

His father found the westward turnpike
he was hoping would be there
and said, “Now that’s good city planning.”

It was the same day that the local newspaper's
printing press broke
and reporters ran around with megaphones
trying to explain obituaries and new zoning laws
to anyone within ear shot.
The sports photographer put her Nikon away
and dug through her closet for her old Instamatic.

"You and I have something in common"
the therapist said to the boy.
He let out a C sharp cry that lasted
the rest of the forty-five minute session.

Back at home the boy's sister
was discovering that there was music
implanted in the tip of her index finger.
She slowly dragged it over the magnetic head
of a child's cassette deck and her face
was filled with wonder as three seconds
of some classical overture sailed through the air.

Dad was down in the garage
crying as he read the vacuum cleaner
instruction manual that his estranged wife
wrote shortly after they first got together.

She had gotten out of the instruction manual business
five years into the marriage
and had purchased the movie theater downtown.
Sensing the hair pin turn the world had taken
she laced up old 16 mm home movies
and ran them on an endless loop in theater two.

The town historian blew out the ceremonial candles
resting on the American Flag laid out before him
when he saw George Washington
through his office window
approaching from a distance.
"It worked!" he cried, "It worked!"

A blonde son smoked crack with
the Presbyterian church's minister saying,
"there's got to be an angle on this I can manipulate."
They rolled their own cigarettes using paper
they ripped out of the phone book.
"The 'M' names burn slower," the minister spoke.
"I'm not sure why."

Everyone's heart was in a millisecond
of lining up in perfect synch.
By midnight something would happen.

The music in the girl's index finger
had grown longer.
An entire unknown overture
was packed tight between skin and bone.

The bird's metallic skeleton
rattled like a bunch of old tin cans in a bucket.
It was time to fly south.

When the moon rose
all the AV kids from the high school
combined an overhead projector
with a telescope
so that it could reach incredible distances.
This was how it came to be
that Slayer’s logo
appeared as clear as day on the moon
for 14 and a half minutes.

It was Square Dance night at the Masonic lodge.
It was the highest turn out yet.
The brother and sister stood on the stage.
He held the microphone nervously and she
lined up her finger on the lodge's cassette deck head.
These changes are permanent.