An Excerpt from “57 Octaves Below Middle C” by Kevin McIlvoy

An excerpt, “at dusk, as always, Bender sang to us,” from 57 Octaves Below Middle C, by Kevin McIlvoy:

At dusk, as always, Bender sang to our congregation, silver hair greasing her blouse, tin on the toes of her boots.

When we were grade-school children, she and I liked duct tape. We liked it like you could never believe. Our favorite thing to steal from the corner store was that silver coil. The way it ripped across, how it stretched over. It gripped!

She stood on the white twenty-gallon empty drum, her boot heels burning the plastic, her tempo uneven. We were a communion of over a dozen church-bums who loved her and were frightened by her hawk-at-the-tree-crown and hawk-on-the-glide shoulders and head, her wings at her sides, her hands palms out, fingers curled up.

Bender and I once duct-taped a picture of our father, who was dying in the Simic State Penitentiary hospital, to a globe sent by our Aunt Horror. On the globe our father clung to the deep South. He spun fast without flying off. When the globe slowed down, his head did a half-turn on his neck, then a turn back by half that. We tore the thing apart, duct-taped the entire planet, kicked it anywhere we wanted. Dented part of Asia, most of Antarctica. Had to re-tape.

57 Octaves Below Middle C (Four Way Books, 2017). Order here from Four Way Books.