By George McDermott

History in G Major 

Maybe you heard them decades ago 
clarinet guitar and bass  
folk song lilt in jazz progressions 
echoes of melodies telling stories 

and maybe you’ve seen the railroad station 
the archangel nearly thirty feet tall 
standing amid Corinthian columns 
and lifting up a fallen soldier 
backlit by the morning streaming  
through the wall of four-story windows 

maybe you boarded the train to New York 
followed the tracks northeast from the station 
curving along the western bank 
then crossing the bridge artists have painted 
crossing the river next to the zoo 

maybe you’ve known the train and the river 
and maybe the music has stuck like a lesson  
a monument to the fragile notion  

that history is something to know 
and knowing things is something to do  

Red Supremacy by Louis Staeble

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

George McDermott is an English teacher, speechwriter, and screenwriter. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Painted Bride Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Saw Palm, and his chapbook—Pictures, Some of Them Moving—was a winner of the Moonstone Chapbook Award. He is also co-author of What Went Right, a nonfiction book about the successes and missteps of public education in the United States.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Louis Staeble, fine arts photographer and poet, lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. His photographs have appeared in “Blue Hour”, “Cenacle”, “Clever Fox” “Conclave Journal”, “Elsewhere Magazine”, “GFT Magazine”, “Fifth Wednesday Journal”, “Four Ties Literary Review”, “Goatsmilk Magazine”, “Havik”, “Inklette”, “Light- A Journal”, “Little Somethings Press”, “Olney Magazine”, “Rubbertop Magazine”, “Sunspot Lit”, “The Helix”, ”Tupelo Quarterly”, “Twist In Time” and “Windmill”. 2016, 2017 and 2018 as part of the Wood County Invitational. Instagram@louiestaeble Web page: staeblestudioa.weebly.com

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