The music playing distantly
Unnamed and slightly schmaltzy
A sonata by an unnamed composer
From some small Baltic state
He used to play on Soviet television
In the evening after the puppet show
And the ads for vacumn cleaners
He lives on in black and white
In a houndstooth jacket
Is certainly someone’s uncle
though he never had children himself
I hear the music across the courtyard
Over clotheslines and above one child
Throwing a ball endlessly against the wall
I fall asleep consoled by these connections

Melanie DuBose advocates for equity in arts education and teaches filmmaking to teenagers in East LA. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Nixes Mate Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Right-Hand Pointing/One Sentence Poems, among others.