Contrapuntal

      Christopher Kondrich

      Parlor Press

      Anderson, South Carolina

      www.parlorpress.com

      Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621

      © 2013 by Parlor Press

      All rights reserved.

      Printed in the United States of America

      S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Kondrich, Christopher, 1982-

       [Poems. Selections]

       CONTRAPUNTAL / Christopher Kondrich.

       pages cm. -- (Free Verse Editions)

       Poems.

       ISBN 978-1-60235-367-1 (paperback) -- ISBN (invalid) 978-1-60235-368-8 (Adobe ebook) -- ISBN (invalid) 978-1-60235-369-5 (ePub)

       I. Title.

       PS3611.O58465C66 2012

       811’.6--dc23

       2012044929

      1 2 3 4 5

      Cover design by David Blakesley.

      Cover image: Robyn O’Neil, ‘Staring into the blankness, they fell in order to begin.” © 2008 by Robyn O’Neil. Used by permission.

      Excerpt from “Napoleonette” from The Little Door Slides Back by Jeff Clark. Copyright © 2004 by Jeff Clark. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

      Printed on acid-free paper.

      Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paperback and ebook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or email [email protected].

      Contents

       So I take my hand,

       Book One

       If there’s one thing

       You were aware

       When they presented you

       I feel it all the time

       I memorized the

       The melodies amounted

       I was always one for

       I came to an embankment

       I decided to call Tim

       My idea is a recital

       I prepared for the recital

       I waited until

       Later, when I spoke

       I was lost due to

       I felt no air

       I peered down at

       The wind had two layers,

       The second time

       I should’ve

       You couldn’t sleep,

       You had taken T

       Book Two

       We have a problem here, Tim said tossing his coat

       That beautiful melody? It is already within us

       I raised my hand, but he didn’t call on me

       It was a relief to hear it said, I had always worried about that

       To be absorbed, which is what I want—to be absorbed into the world

       Tonight, the piano will project me into a dream

       I won’t say Bach or Schoenberg; I’ll say that I am my favorite composer

       How am I supposed to go about loving someone

       Book Three

       As I walk through the door to the lab, I am continuously repositioned before the threshold.

       I hear one of my colleagues say my name in recognition.

       I was about to put a check mark next to the name on my list of the patient who I just met with.

       The vials

       T could have side effects the parent company imagined, effects that were

       I remember pointing to the graphs with my red laser, directing attention from one part of the graph to another by moving the red dot of the laser from one area to