Lips

Abstract

Lips Gerald Stern (bio) Sitting with his friends he learned how shameful it wasto have played the golden trombone and not the wooden fluteand to have blasted his own way into manhood that wayinstead of making a soft sound with his mouth and fingers. But he was stubborn and anyhow he had thick lipswhich stood him in good stead in one case but not the other,and furthermore his friends had died,one two three, one after another.And he was left to his own devices,I would say his own instruments. He could have considered a harp, or, in his case, a lyreand found a tall stool to display his wares,I haven’t forgotten that,for he wasn’t—finally—restricted to one thing.Indeed a mouth organ if push came to shove,something he could almost swallow for the drama’s sake. Think of him getting rid of spitand warming up behind the French horns, theFrench horns he hated beyond anythingfor their thin lips and their benevolent sounds. [End Page 597] Gerald Stern gerald stern was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2006. In 2010, W. W. Norton published Early Collected Poems: 1965–1992. For many years a teacher at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Stern now lives in Lambertville, NJ. Copyright © 2016 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.