J. R. SOLONCHE

 Zero

Zero is my favorite number. It is

a simple number. It is a quiet

number. It is not a number at all.

It is the number of things that can

go wrong if you do nothing. It is

the number of times I have won

the lottery. It is the number of times
my cat has washed the dishes. It is

the number of complaints I have
on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. But

zero is also powerful. It means

a beginning. It means a blank page.

It means infinite potential. It means

promise, aspiration, inspiration.

You start from zero. You build up

from zero. It is where everything can

happen because nothing has happened

yet. Zero does not hope. Zero just is,
an absence that means everything is

fine. No problems. No worries. No

nothing. So I thank you, Brahmagupta,

O father of the zero, O father of nothing,

O grandfather of infinity.

Bohemian Rhapsody

The first time I heard "Bohemian

Rhapsody," my daughter was playing

it in her room. The door was closed,

but it was loud. I usually never paid

any attention to the stuff she listened to,

but this thing hit me in the solar plexus.

I stood in the hallway and listened to

the whole song, all six minutes of it.

It was complicated. It had slow parts,

fast parts, parts that sounded like an

opera, parts that were just shouting.

It was not boring. So I stood transfixed,

half in the dark, half in the light from

the kitchen, listening. I prefer simple

songs. A man walks into a bar, a man

buys a drink, a man goes home. That is

a simple song. This song was not simple,

except the very ending, a simple guitar.

Then the silence, which was not a simple

silence. The silence after was different

from the silence before. A silence like

the silence one hears only after Bach.

A silence full of the same forever as that.

Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of over forty books of poetry and co-author of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

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