Franz Liszt Snores Like a Buzzsaw

Even the gypsies say so. The sound
throttles their encampment—
shakes violin strings to life, untethers horses,
rumbles pots of water into phantom boil.

Most women don’t last a night.
They slip out, ears covered,
after clipping a keepsake lock of hair.
Of course, his wife has her own bedroom.

But I truly appreciate that glottal phlegm rattle—
it’s so avant garde—and there’s a strange harmony
in the way it makes my ivory combs vibrate
on the night table.

He hums a Hungarian Rhapsody
as he rolls down my stockings,
teases my legs open with a symphonic poem,
but what I really live for is the snore.

I time the long pauses between them—
quadruple meter, four-four or twelve-eight.
Each is a fermataed rest, the exaggerated silence
before a cadenza’s showcase, a body’s shuddering climax.

Brianna Noll is a doctoral student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her MFA from Florida State University in 2008. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, The Portland Review, The Sonora Review, and elsewhere.