He left in messages, starting with cassettes to catch his voice. He cut away at the irreverent almost, unblossoms. It is this way for the chicken and egg: a mother and never, my mother. This is preference simplified. The distance of pearled milk poured down wells for sound effect.

Who does it imagine to meet? A dream fever, a preservative punch into gut. Dots! cries a curtain of polkas dancing, wildly.

There may have been Bohemia before there were records, but there never were Slavic wigs or snaggletooth women. These are the lines he left in messages on tapes. Tapes that address a mother startled by the capture of voice. The son she imagines she made-up.

Madeline Vardell is an MFA candidate at New Mexico State University. She is the winner of the 2013 Kay Murphy prize in poetry, selected by Lara Glenum. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Bayou Magazine, [Pank], Rhino, and Whiskey Island. She lives in Mesilla, New Mexico.