By the time he was infamous enough to sell out bullfighting arenas, the Caruso C was a sort of burlesque number.  He would inch to it from the frequencies below, nearly embrace the note, and then flat a bit before trumpeting, C! with full tenor fury. Toscanini chided him for grandstanding, but this in-and-out tease worked well with German and Latin American houses, which particularly enjoyed the punishment of a loud flirtation.

To hear that girly voice escape the concertmaster’s staff and push into secular, structural ecstasy must have felt like a peep show from behind the veil. In [the castrato] Farinelli’s highest note, they might have heard a terrifyingly private sound, one usually made by a woman, smirking at them from the mouth of a breathtakingly lovely man.  Maybe the women felt anyone who sang sounds so close to their own must understand the root tone of the noises women make.

Did men feel the same way two centuries later, upon hearing a square-jawed, shoulder-padded Lauren Bacall hit a baritone C2 for “put your lips together and blow?”

The third scream, I think, is the scream that won it. You can hear me lose a battle in my throat.  You do not have to assume that I will be mute for days afterward; you know it.  Because on the e of that last “Stella!”, the sound sinks lower into my neck and starts ripping. Imagine the margin of a piece of paper torn, notch, by notch, from a spiral notebook, or an anvil dropping through floor after floor of a cartoon tenement.  I did not tell myself to make this hurt, but there I am, punching lower and lower into myself to see what comes up.  The noise is just awful, but it is mighty loud.

Circling slow and dripping like a fat June bug in the rain,

turbos throbbing in the labored

dark over Chicago, the Electra turned, one wing

pivoted up, like an old dog tilted on three legs,

smelling dank, an old heaviness in him, as though

he were about to tumble over toward those glorious,

snowy lights below. There might have been

freezing sleet as well. In any case, I know

I laughed into a glass half filled with bourbon,

glanced again at the two feathered props

out the window, their cowlings charred and smoky.

But freed all at once from months of killing depression,

elated strangely, almost uplifted.

In Stockholm that icy day

the rain blew from the north and then

by noon the run broke through; by three

the Swedes were outdoors sunning in thin sleeves,

strolling as though it were Easter,

while you and I, like birds of paradise

lost in Lapland, huddled in doorways, bitten through.

Everyone about us smiled at one another; we fought our way

street by street to our hotel, and buried ourselves

under blankets. And sighed at the lonely

displacement. How little we knew then,

newly married, of the cold that finds

the remotest parts of the body to lodge,

that there’s no defense except by slow degrees

to become acclimatized. And for a cold this deep

it would take years of freezing.

The last of my father’s brothers, that year

(a year before my father died at fifty-seven)

Jack refused to say goodbye to anyone –

instead he’d laugh and only turn away

as if his departing guests were simply

stepping out a moment into his yard

to listen to nightingales or smell the jacaranda

and sweet magnolia thick as constellations.

The brothers seemed to have a clock inside them,

set at fifty-six or so, Jack said.

And the best of them go out face down in the leaves

at home, and the worst in a drunk tank

in borrowed shows. Lucky, he said, the man

who knows the number of his days. Lucky

twice over if it’s autumn and the red leaves

and yellow rain haven’t given all their kisses away.

Panther. Painter. Puma. Cougar. Mountain lion. Whatever you want to call it, by the end of October, half a dozen more people claim they have caught a glimpse of it: a pale sliver in the distance, a flash of fur through the trees. In the woods, hunters linger in their tree stands, hoping they might be the next. In the houses, the big cat creeps nightly, making the rounds of dinner tables and dreams.

I come home the next evening to find a dark snake draped across the foot of the bed. Motionless, waiting for my next move. I freeze, thrilled to the sheer shock of it. My pulse rips with terror and delight. Fingers quivering, I switch on the light. But it is only my husband’s limp black sock, left from last night. Caught where it landed when we pulled off our clothes once words had failed us, as they always have.

The first time Jesse spoke to him, Dave was lying on the Musician’s floor, and he sat up and said, Holy shit, the Lord speaketh, and Jesse said, No, man, listen, it’s Jesse James. Last week, over an after-dinner joint, Dave told the Musician that Jesse said that his brother’s treasure was buried somewhere along the ridgeline. Can Jesse be any more specific? the Musician asked, taking a hit. No, man, Dave said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. I don’t want to bug him.