The Music of What Happens

by Bill Konigsberg

“I call it, ‘The Music of What Happens.’ After the last line of the Heaney poem.” He reads. “Down the street from me Ms. Carter douses her head The shower pulses And spits her sins down the drain Next house over, with the red plastic Adirondack chairs Mr. Simmons cries while eating waffles His sink bone dry Dishes with dried-up barbeque pork and oatmeal pile high Mowing the front lawn next door Jimmy Fowler dreams of Jenny Carmichael And her fantastic tits Mr. Torres in his two-story mini-palace Sits on his bathroom throne His waste meeting Ms. Carter’s sins somewhere Under Carriage Lane Here and there We Eat blueberries out of a ramekin Chat with strangers about the sex we won’t be having Read fake news about the end of the world Peer over our shoulder at the pimple on our back Check our breath for rampant bacterial stench Straighten the family portrait, the one where Kim grimaces for some unknown reason Dream of a better street Ignore the sewage below our feet — Which shows that we are human, and that’s the worst — And soon there is a knock on Ms. Carter’s door She answers, her hair in its final bun, her smile pasted on Like a child playing with Elmer’s And the man asks Can I climb your palm tree And knock off the dead fronds And she nods, because he is saving her life And she says, as if it’s nothing, ‘Sure.’