Phonograph
A character representing sound. Or. A machine invented by Thomas Edison by
which noise is recorded and reproduced. And. An instrument capable of being attached to pianofortes and organs by means of which they are rendered.
Melographic. Capable of writing any music played upon them. For. If the
instrument makes probable this oral hahucination, you spin the record of your reddened choice. Or. You mimic the melody and its blank harmony. You
accompany the symphony with a tenor of all tomorrows. While I, lost in the
Maze of Mirrors, ask you to tell me again the story.
You say, First. You say, Make. First, make your mouth make a sound. Speak into
the mouthpiece and cause the tremors in the thin diaphragm. Then. The steel
point makes tracings upon the hard wax. Fix the thing upon a spinning cylinder.
And. By means of the tracings, the diaphragm will repeat with perfection your
original voice. Or. The echoes in the mountains of your lamentations. As. Cries
in a haunted brothel. Or. Whispers in a ghostly tavern. The instrument has
spoken in our hearing. Listen. It is a natural outcome of the telephone. Listen.
The old man's laugh comes to us as out of a phonograph.
I say, Perfect. I say, Yet. This instrument warbles. And. This record is warped.
And. The tongue of this snake. Has scratched this disk. For. Your voice is
skipping. And. As I put the conch to my same hear, I listen to the echo of. I
listen to the echo of. The raspy susurrations of your adieu.
Applied to a person or thing that exactly reproduces the utterances of another
person or thing. Hence, the transitive verb. To report in Pitman's phonograph.
As. It is a great loss to me that your song was not phonographed and preserved.
And. Whether it be so, it is phonographed in the mind of the mindful God. All
out of sync.
Sandy Florian, "Phonograph" from Telescope. Copyright © 2006 by Sandy Florian, published by Action Books. Reprinted by permission of Sandy Florian.
Source: Telescope (Action Books, 2006)