Willow Weep for Me

Around are walls in 1940s green. Behind, antlers top a hutch stuffed with Scotch cartons. To the left, Rommel Reyes, a keyboard player with an unlikely tank of a name, turns his ear toward the music as though it were a shifting sprite, an Ariel to be beguiled with murmured incantations and an aqua surfer Tee. At right, Jeff Hewer, of the tapping sneaker and upright posture, holds a mental basin of water into which guitar notes splunk. Between, Carol Oya’s song, a supple willow branch in sparkly shoes that bends upon the stream and says that love has sinned.

Photograph, "Carol Between Sets", by Margaret Nieradka.