PAVANE FOR A DEAD PRINCESS
Katherine Fallon
Wrist so straight at the neck of the viola
you forget you even have a joint.
You will excel.
You love the permanent hickey the chin rest leaves
passable as a strawberry birthmark
love watching resin dust snow past the bridge
how because you don’t clean it
it dulls like hairspray.
You fake your practice record spectacularly
& they can’t question you: your mother signed off on it
blind & you are first row.
You get so good at that throaty vibrato
peer through the F holes at the sound post
hold your breath
out of respect for the chamber as it hums
itself to sleep. You do all this for years
but only so many. Once you start something
you can’t stop. Unless you are very good at it.
About the author
Katherine Fallon is the author of the chapbooks Zero Sum (Bottlecap Press), The Book on Fractures (Ghost City Press), The Toothmakers' Daughters (Finishing Line Press), and Demoted Planet (Headmistress Press). A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in AGNI, Colorado Review, Nimrod, Meridian, Passages North, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of Whittle Micro-Press. You can find her online at katherinefallon.com or on Instagram @ghostelephants.
Katherine just moved to the Baltimore area from Georgia and is having a really great time exploring.