ZY

Friday nights we’d sneak out after midnight
push the pickup backwards down the driveway
engine off & hushed but for cicada song
& crunch of gravel down to the driving range
that always forgot to pick up after itself
& where no one ever came to run us off —
we’d wade through wet grass gathering
golf balls that glowed softly under starlight
& then with that aluminum bat we kept stashed
in the backseat ping them out into the night
watching them dissolve in darkness standing
& listening for what they hit maybe treeline
or river or concrete parking lot beyond
& sometimes you’d hear nothing & that’s how
you knew you’d sent one far & true & in my
favorite photograph the camera catches
you mid-swing wearing pink pig slippers
a green tee-shirt & skinny jeans the flash
reflecting your voted-best-in-class blue eyes
which were colored contact lenses but you
& I both know that memory like place
is re-envisioned every visit & that
driving range is gone & so are you
& as I drift towards sleep I hear those summer
songs as Cygnus soared above & we
stood alone together in that dark field
silent & waiting & listening for an answer

WYNTON MARSALIS ANSWERS WHY

Bright white shirt & navy shoes,
he arrives slow-stepped in his blues —
sets his trumpet to one side
& takes his seat for interview.

Questions come star-struck quick —
How does it feel to be so good?
When did you know? He can’t stand
the flattery — good compared

to who? To time? A follow-up
of whys —Why all this…? Why
dedication….? Why, still,
having won each accolade…?

He can’t sit still to hear them named…
Because — he clears his voice to say —
because my father loved this music
& played it every night, & because

I loved him, & because, mostly,
no one ever came to listen

Reed Turchi is a poet and musician from Swannanoa, North Carolina, now based in Brooklyn. His debut collection Dancing with Poets was selected by Victoria Chang for the 2026 Colorado Prize for Poetry, and his poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Narrative Magazine, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. Turchi has won a Grammy Award and received an Emmy Nomination, and has had his music featured in Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, NPR, PBS, The Oxford American and many more. Turchi is the co-editor of The Swannanoa Review.