The French Horn

By Jessica Cuello

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What if your name is not yours 
but the absent father, a stranger 

written on your worksheet,
a glyph on your face 

carried through the halls 
of West Street Elementary

where the teachers gaze 
out the great glass doors longingly, 

perpetual pale light at either end, 
and you carry a giant French Horn,

the school’s horn on loan, 
its swirl a beautiful coil of gold

opening like a bell and it calls to you
though it is heavy

bigger than you 
and you stop every block to rest 

to change hands and deep inside 
the case the dark velvet form

holds the instrument 
and you are quiet as survival

walking dreamlike
past the crossing guard

on a street you think of 
as your journey

because you walk alone
and everything that happens to you

happens on this route
between name and apartment, 

the grey one that leans 
sideways and gets Condemned 

in a pale paper 
pasted over a window

and when you live there 
you listen through the walls, 

your whole body an ear, 
and though you quit later

because you have 
the wrong embouchure

and don’t practice enough, 
the horn glints 

behind your shoulder
in silent wait.

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Jessica Cuello’s most recent book is Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2023). Her book, Liar, was selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize. Cuello is the recipient of a 2023 NYSCA Artist Grant and is poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review. She teaches French in Central NY.

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