“Ventrilo” by Greg Rappleye (poetry ’00)
An excerpt from “Ventrilo” by Greg Rappleye (poetry ’00), published by Prometheus Dreaming.
Ventrilo
Bought in a Saco junk shop and recalled from Captain Marvel, it’s a tin loop, a shattered whelk—beveled by waves so as not to cut—by which I once believed a voice might be thrown at all bodies, living and dead. Sugared in whiskey, against my wintered lips, it throws no voice; merely renders a flutter, a trill, a whirred falsetto song. Listen. St. Stephen’s Feast. The Wren Parade. A scatter of snow across herring-boned bricks.
