{"id":11413,"date":"2020-07-16T10:50:12","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T09:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11413"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:51:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T10:51:42","slug":"cello-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11413","title":{"rendered":"2 Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h4>\n

Cello Case<\/span><\/b><\/h4>\n

A<\/span>fter her cello was sold,
\n<\/span>her bows all given away,
\n<\/span>little remained of my Mother
\n<\/span>except \u00a0for her cello case\u2014
\n<\/span>That large brown case
\n<\/span>was almost the shape of a person,
\n<\/span>though it was only a shell,
\n<\/span>hard, expressionless,
\n<\/span>and always a little forbidding
\n<\/span>sitting in our living room.
\n<\/span>It was the thing Mother dressed up
\n<\/span>each year for Halloween:
\n<\/span>she\u2019d tie a cape on its neck
\n<\/span>give it a witches cap,
\n<\/span>then move it to the window
\n<\/span>for all the neighbors to see.
\n<\/span>As a child I never dared
\n<\/span>to touch that big brown case,
\n<\/span>I always feared the cello
\n<\/span>Mother kept inside:
\n<\/span>it\u2019s body big and hollow,
\n<\/span>its tones sorrowful;
\n<\/span>they\u2019d follow me around
\n<\/span>all day long at school\u2014
\n<\/span>Only in my dreams
\n<\/span>do I unclasp its buttons,
\n<\/span>and push its two halves open:
\n<\/span>inside it\u2019s velvet lined,
\n<\/span>and still smells of rosin.
\n<\/span>I search and search the case
\n<\/span>for any little vestige
\n<\/span>of the cello I remember,
\n<\/span>but find there\u2019s nothing\u2019s left
\n<\/span>except a piece of paper,
\n<\/span>stating the cello was sold
\n<\/span>to a lady in Manhattan;
\n<\/span>inside there\u2019s nothing else,
\n<\/span>but strange dark space.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The Rathskeller<\/span><\/b><\/h4>\n

The old brown Steinway in the basement
\n<\/span>had once perhaps been even beautiful,
\n<\/span>a gift to my father from an adoring student.
\n<\/span>But Mother firmly insisted it be moved
\n<\/span>to the Rathskeller, where no one ever went,
\n<\/span>except the dogs to leave behind hard turds
\n<\/span>or else the cats to hide in lightning storms.
\n<\/span>Yet this was where my father always went
\n<\/span>to escape his nagging wife and needy kids.
\n<\/span>For hours on end, Father practiced down there,
\n<\/span>thundering away at the same musical riff,
\n<\/span>only to emerge at dinner dripping with sweat.
\n<\/span>There Mother saved him the shortest stool
\n<\/span>and often prepared his least favorite meal.
\n<\/span>What are you doing down there<\/span><\/i>? We\u2019d ask.
\n<\/span>Preparing for concerts<\/span><\/i>\u00a0was all he\u2019d ever say,
\n<\/span>shovelling in mouthfuls of beans and rice,
\n<\/span>and refusing to look at Mother across the table.
\n<\/span>He\u2019d wash a few dishes, take out the trash,
\n<\/span>then descend back into the Rathskeller again.
\n<\/span>Once my sister and I snuck down there together.
\n<\/span>We found that not a single light switch worked,
\n<\/span>and so it was in darkness we first saw it:
\n<\/span>brown and stalwart, and pushed up against a wall.
\n<\/span>The piano\u2019s white keys were all yellowing,
\n<\/span>like the teeth of beasts we\u2019d seen in picture books;
\n<\/span>and some of the black keys sounded muffled,
\n<\/span>as if they were being suffocated by a pillow\u2014
\n<\/span>My sister and I sat at the bench together,
\n<\/span>throwing back our heads and closing our eyes,
\n<\/span>humming along and pretending to be Father.
\n<\/span>We got on our knees and played with the foot petals,
\n<\/span>found pressing them could make the keys play
\n<\/span>all on their own, as if a ghost were inside\u2014
\n<\/span>and so that morning we played on the ghost piano,
\n<\/span>giggling and inventing songs in the darkness,
\n<\/span>and wondering if our father would ever appear.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cello Case After her cello was sold, her bows all given away, little remained of my Mother except \u00a0for her cello case\u2014 That large brown case was almost the shape of a person, though it was only a shell, hard, expressionless, and always a little forbidding sitting in our living room. It was the thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[394,395],"tags":[398],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n2 Poems - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11413\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11413&page=2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2 Poems - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cello Case After her cello was sold, her bows all given away, little remained of my Mother except \u00a0for her cello case\u2014 That large brown case was almost the shape of a person, though it was only a shell, hard, expressionless, and always a little forbidding sitting in our living room. It was the thing […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11413\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-07-16T09:50:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-07-29T10:51:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jodie Hollander\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jodie Hollander\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11413\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11413\",\"name\":\"2 Poems - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-07-16T09:50:12+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-07-29T10:51:42+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/62e42055ea2eabed08545ed4049f9908\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11413\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/62e42055ea2eabed08545ed4049f9908\",\"name\":\"Jodie Hollander\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Jodie Hollander\"},\"description\":\"Jodie Hollander's poems have appeared in journals such as The Poetry Review, The Yale Review, PN Review, The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, The Rialto and Australian Book Review. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa, a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant in Italy, a Hawthornden Fellowship in Scotland, and attended MacDowell 2015. Her debut full-length collection, My Dark Horses, is published with Liverpool University Press (Pavilion Poetry). 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