On Seeing the Bag of John Lennon’s Bloody Clothes
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland
 
They were in a glass case, in a crumpled paper bag
wrapped in duct tape and plastic, next to a photograph
of his blood-flecked glasses. When Lennon was shot,
 
I was six, up late with the flu, and my father heard it
from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football.
He didn’t cry or yell, just lowered his head
 
like my grandfather saying grace, and asked me
to get my mother from the shower. Today,
when we arrived, after hours speeding down I-80,
 
my parents posed in front of the glass pyramids,
like teens on a honeymoon. They led me
to Janis’s scarf and her ’65 Porsche, to Morrison’s
 
Cub Scout shirt, then let me slip away by the Stones.
That’s when I saw Lennon’s clothes and Yoko’s note
about wanting to be shocking. For a moment,
 
I was rooted, wondering if she’d ever dared open
the bag or if those clothes had stayed dark and heaped
for decades, made of tougher stuff than the body
 
they’d been cut off. Somehow it was more of a grave
than a grave, and when my parents came walking
toward me, I steered them away, as if they hadn’t seen
 
more than I, hadn’t waited all my life for me
to loosen the strings, even if it wasn’t dropping
acid at the Paradise or yelling slogans at cops
 
in the park. But I’ve always been more doo-wop
than rock, the Colonial to their tenement.
After Lennon died, there were nights my father
 
would turn on the stereo and sit on the couch
in his work clothes, still dusty from ripping up
carpets. As the music played, he’d look so distant
 
that I’d just watch him listen until he asked me
to lift the needle from the record, a moon I’d guide
back to orbit, then hold onto with both hands.


Published in Six Portraits