Austin Tremblay

CREPITUS

Pressure keeps a house: the slurred speech
of old wood, cockeyed deadbolts wrenched
and wrenching. Even in this spotless
room, the door swells and reddens,
loud walls removing their screws, a tight noise
of bones traveling.

* * *

LATE ON PALM SUNDAY

All those uncomfortably dressed girls,
governing their straight, laceless bodies
with menthol habits and the dull color of dust.

At the buffet, they'll sit beside men
who wear the kind of hats that stay on
during meals, shirts badged with names.

Because there won't be work that evening,
the girls will steal those shirts. Parading around
late on Palm Sunday, they'll cross their near-bare legs

the way crickets do, singing. As the men scoop them
in to sleep, walking over their own crumpled shirts,
they'll remember putting all the crickets outside

when they were boys. Bad luck to step on one
in the house. They cupped the bugs to take care of them,
sometimes prayed not to kill what was between their hands.

* * *

RESOLVE

I can't get this chord progression out of my head–A minor to F to C–and I know exactly why. A minor, because it's a minor third below C, causes a dark start, like birth, like the way a bar looks when you enter. And then, because F is the subdominant chord to C, it hammers on C's door in the rain, hard up, stuck and wild, like when the bar enters you. F begs: Let me finish this. Let me in where it's major and warm. I've worked hard for this. I deserve the sound of your resolve. And there's no choice then. C has to let F back in, home. For music, for that science and formula, it can't refuse. I used to be proud to hear this, to pick it out anywhere. Now it won't leave me alone. I didn't think my life would be like music. I thought it would be music. That I would ache through this progression toward comfort, that aptitude alone would save me. But I'm not a song. I can't sing myself. I can't get these chords out of my head. They won't stop feeling like this, and I won't stop wanting them to, needing that resolve. I can't fight this feeling anymore. My own compulsion is my fucked up mercy.

Austin Tremblay was born and raised in North Carolina. He is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Houston. Before graduate school, he worked as an actor and playwright. Austin's writing has been featured in Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Bateau, and other locales. He edits the literary journal Owl Eye Review.