John J. Conley is the Francis J. Knott Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University in Maryland. His recent philosophical monographs include Adoration and Annihilation (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) and The Suspicion of Virtue (Cornell University Press, 2002). Recently produced plays include Final Arrangements (Run-of-the-Mill Theater, Baltimore, 2009), Arthritic (Vestige Group Theater, Austin, 2008), and O’Boylan’s Finest (Heartland Theater, Bloomington, 2007). He has published poetry in French and English in many journals, including Windfall, Jewelweed, and Ampersand.
Fall 2009
Table of Contents - Vol. V, No. 3
John J. Conley
It was not the Debussy.
It was hearing the Debussy through your black hair, through that ear carved like a Hawthorne gable, through your eyes shaded like a bank teller frozen on the bill, through your mouth perched between smile and frown and the sigh you always bore at intermission.
When we listened on Thursday.
It was not her touch too heavy on the gliding key.
It was seeing her touch too staccato the keys and feeling your back slowly straighten and hearing the low grunt I only could hear and seeing your foot in the scratched black loafers glide closer to the torn seat in front of us and back, sudden back, in the same slow irritation.
When we sat still in the box on Thursday.
It was not the applause when she bowed in the blue strapless and gazed, quick gazed, at us.
It was seeing your streaked hands clap more slowly than the woman in the K-mart perfume who clapped it up in front of us and auditing the cramped, deliberate gesture as your one palm slowly glazed the other and seeing your legs cross, snap, as you glanced at your chipped Swiss watch.
The Thursday night we fought over the rent before the Debussy. And still. As we drank his étude no. 4 in the box. And still, and still.
© John J. Conley
