Ethel

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Ethel

Ethel

A Brief History of Our Ears

by
Jeff Friedman & Roy Nathanson

JEFF FRIEDMAN’s eleventh book, *Broken Signals* was published by Bamboo Dart Press in August 2024. Friedman’s poems and mini stories have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, Contemporary Surrealist and *Magical Realist Anthology, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium*, *Best Microfiction* *2021 2022, 2023, and 2024*, and *The New Republic*. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, and numerous other awards.

ROY NATHANSON is a saxophonist, poet and composer. He has written two books of poems: *Conversations and Other Songs/*Mad Hat Press (2020) and *Subway Moon*/ Buddy’s Knife Editions of Hamburg (2008.) His poems and stories have appeared in *Commonweal, 5AM, The Brooklyn Rail, Plume. Berlin Review,* and on NPR. Roy has written songs for Mavis Staples, Jimmy Scott, Elvis Costello, Debbie Harry and has recorded 11 CDs with *The Jazz Passengers,* the band he co-founded with trombonist Curtis Fowlkes. He is a recipient of the Bessie and Joseph Jefferson Awards and grants from Chamber Music America, New York Foundation for the Arts, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

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from A Brief History of Our Ears
A Brief History of My Ears

My ears began as multicellular creatures crawling slowly in sand. They might have been mistaken for oysters washed up on shore or even mussels, but there were no pearls inside the shells of my ears. For protection, they buried themselves in sand. Even then, my ears could hear the world grinding its savage teeth. Even then, they could hear the animals dying in battle or fleeing from it. When the sea covered them, they floated for ages until they sprouted wings with tiny hairs. Then they joined the flocks of ears rising into the sky, surveilling the earth for a home. Over time, some settled on rocks and evolved into moss. Others landed on trees and shook like leaves until they became leaves. Some just became the ears of the wind. And some collided with other ears and fell to the ground unconscious, stomped on again and again. My ears dove onto the top of my head, where they fluttered like butterflies until I caught them and cupped them to the gluey sides of my face, where they stick out like antennae.