Our rocking chair squeaks. It didn’t used to
but this is the third kid whose bedtime routine
has centered around the chair and somewhere
inside those years of ferrying babies over
the threshold of consciousness the connection
between the rails and the seat was ruptured
not completely but just enough to form
the conditions for the squeak. The problem
exists somewhere beneath the fabric so
I can’t just indiscriminately spray WD-40—
the only solution I know, and there’s no one
at the company to call because the company doesn’t exist
anymore. It was bought out by a chain
who discontinued all of the original designs; they even
removed the name of the company
from my brain. As I sit here, gently rocking
back and forth with my son pressing his ear
into my chest, I try to recall it, but I can’t.
It’s hard to think with the squeak squeak squeak
punching every downswing, although my son
doesn’t mind. He falls asleep anyway
which makes me wonder if perhaps we’re training him
to love harsh, unpleasant noises. Maybe
we’ll look back and realize that it was here in the squeaky
rocking chair that we created an atonal
composer, jackhammer operator, or screamo guitarist.
Maybe by associating the chair’s squeak
with the warmth of my body, I’m turning noise itself
into a source of comfort, associating home
and safety with nails on a chalkboard, the strobe of a fire
alarm, a car’s engine backfiring in an alley.
Maybe when he’s older the quiet will be what upsets him.
He’ll despise sitting in a deck chair overlooking
a lake at sunset or walking in the woods at sunrise.
He’ll hate meditation and libraries and poetry readings
especially the way the audience holds its breath
when they anticipate the end of the poem coming
as if the last line deserves more of their attention
than the rest, as if the ending were the key to the locked
palace of the poem, the solution the detective reveals
only when the entire house of suspects
has been gathered together. The Land of Nod.
That’s what the company was called.
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash.
P. Scott Cunningham
P. Scott Cunningham is the author of Ya Te Veo (University of Arkansas, 2018), selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins as part of the Miller Williams Poetry Series. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in The Nation, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, POETRY, A Public Space, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Monocle, and The Guardian, among others. Born and raised in South Florida, he lives with his family in Illinois.