~NICK BRUNO~

MALINCONIA

---

 
 
I recognize the scar at the corner
of his right eye and recall how my foot
hit the spokes on the front wheel of his Pegoretti
catapulted him onto an asphalt surface,
his broken glasses slicing into a younger skin.
 
Nothing else reminds me of the late
afternoons spent in his garage playing
with a model racecar circuit built
from pressed wood and plaster of Paris:
hills and faux forests surrounding its pit stops.
 
His flaxen hair, all but gone, I catch
his silhouette against the light
of a vestibule lamp. The filaments
of hair forming an aura about his head.
His left eye is hardly blinking. An asymmetrical
 
smile: the mouth’s left corner sags
below the right. The left arm useless,
no longer able to fashion or stroke
the classical guitars he has called his own.
Behind him Segovia’s strumming of Villa-Lobos.
 

© by Nick Bruno