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Column 539

The Guitar

Intro by Ted Kooser
07.19.2015

Patrick Phillips lives in Brook­lyn, but in every city, town and vil­lage, and at every cross­roads, there’s an old gui­tar. Here’s one from Ele­gy for a Bro­ken Machine, a fine book from Alfred A. Knopf.

The Guitar

It came with those scratches
from all their belt buckles,

palm-dark with their sweat
like the stock of a gun:

an arc of pickmarks cut
clear through the lacquer

where all the players before me
once strummed—once

thumbed these same latches
where it sleeps in green velvet.

Once sang, as I sing, the old songs.
There’s no end, there’s no end

to this world, everlasting.
We crumble to dust in its arms.

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2015 by Patrick Phillips, “The Guitar,” from Elegy for a Broken Machine, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Patrick Phillips and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.