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  • Near Mint
  • Alex Quinlan (bio)

Your second paradise, brother—the first one lost or locked up    years ago—is a record shop where you haunt the back room,flick through crates of new arrivals in search of    first-press singles from before our parents were born,

sonic miracles made in the shadow cast by    the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest astride his war horse,standing guard over the klansman's dissolving    bones sealed inside the marble pedestal

across the street from Sun Studio where Ike Turner    committed to an acetate plate the strutting odeto the Rocket 88 that carried him and the Kings of Rhythm    from the amnesiac mud of Clarksdale, Mississippi,

up Highway 61 to Memphis, and thereby invented rock and roll    while Elvis was still learning how to drive, how to stealthe sound you're searching for, sealed in the groove's coiled ribbon,    decades unplayed, sound so sound you can see

the sweat pearling on Jackie Brenston's upper lip    when Ike leans back from his out-of-tunebarrelhouse piano and shouts, Blow your horn, boy,    blow!; can feel the walking guitar line buzzing

because the road up was cracked and torn,    and the amplifier got busted on a bump, but they couldn'tafford a replacement, so they stuffed the housing    with wads of newspaper to hold the cone in place,

and because they only had one shot    at the recording, and because it almost workedbut didn't, because you do the best you can    until you can do better, the flaw, the fingerprint of current

driving the sound downhill like a river of magnetic light,    became—in its buzzy rawness, in the distortionthat perfects the pure—beautiful, and if you can find    just one copy that isn't bottomed out and crackling,

even if it isn't dustless and shining under unbroken shrink wrap    you know how to clean it up well enough to tastethe sound shot from the needle, let it lick your skin raw    like a mother-cat's rough tongue. When they put your first love [End Page 169]

away for what happened to her mother, for what she did    or didn't do that night with that knife, you learned to live withnot knowing, with knowing and not knowing why    our mother still went to visit her every month, why she

still sent money, why she wrote and read those acres    of letters the story carried across, echoed backuntil the signal half-drowned in fuzz, lungful of static    the suggestion of a tune breaks through, last gasp

from a far radio tower. Down here, when the women say    la otra, they're talking about the kind of womanyou're always looking for, the kind who knows    music is locked in all our bones and it has to come out somehow

no matter who gets hurt by the sound. When I see you again,    I'll know it's you by your scent—oiled leather, the charinside whisky barrels—at once exotic and familiar,    like a postcard from next door or a new group

covering an old song. You can forget the second    love who left you; if you let the memory play outenough times, you won't be able to hear the signal    over the noise, and sure it's lying but it's the way

to teach yourself the truth you don't know    you know. When the summer rains come hardit puts me back in that room in Chattanooga again,    down the street from Bessie Smith Hall, where you played

Anne Peebles for me that first time, the liquid pizzicato    backbeat of "I Can't Stand the Rain" intruded upon midmeasureby the nighthawk of her voice rising a sudden updraft    to a falsetto fragile enough we know she isn't singing

about the weather. You have five copies.    You save and store, but you neverkeep track of any of it; you've got a hundred more    keys than locks, and half the time you can't

open the door in front of you, but I'm just as guilty    and we both know when the...

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