Allison Serraes

THE WAY SHE PLAYS

by Allison Serraes

Ramona plays her ukulele
in an antique electric chair:

Nylon vibrates
under cool hands
like lightning
        strumming keys on kites
like finger-picking
        sonofusion
like palms
        on plasma lamps—
like electric.
Ukulele, ukulele,
        thick and cottony in the throat
like yucca. Booming
into the
        soundbox of the sky.
Ukulele,
ukulele, Leilani,
        luna, luminous—
electric eel,
lanikai, kilowatts under water
        like blow-dryers in a bathtub
bubbling tides
        waxing and waning
lanikai, lanikai,
        undercurrent,
               wave current
wavelength,
                lambda equals velocity over frequency,
amplitudes and
        oscillating acoustics
humming over humps
        and plucked
into atmospheric electrostatic discharge.
Fluid ukulele,
        of hands,
               of islands,
                       of mahogany, 
mahalo,
hula-hula dancing,
        medulla oblongata
of breathing and blood pressure
        ebbing and flowing,
of lobes,
        of stems,
               of auditory cortices,
                       of charged neurons—
electric.

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Allison Serraes is an executive editor of the forthcoming edition of The Mangrove Review. She is currently finishing her master’s degree in English at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Florida.