The Future is Flugel

Eloise Schultz

The revolution begins in New Orleans.

In a Piccadilly parking lot, men are seen 

exchanging oblong parcels which gleam 

suspiciously when unwrapped. Overnight

the nation’s marching band players acquire 

social capital, for which they are wholly 

unprepared. By summertime, sousaphones 

adorn the windows of major retailers, 

and in September the fifth grade students

of a high-achieving charter school 

are furnished flumpets instead of laptops. 

Colleges are flooded with essays debating

embouchure injury and cylindrical bores.

Control measures are out of the question.

When a woman carrying an ophicleide 

shuts down Manhattan for five hours, 

we know our lives are changed 

forever. Dad lowers the blinds. 

He digs around in the closet until

he finds his Couesnon Monopole

and tells me to run the bathtub.

Far below, we feel the fervid pulse 

of a thousand sackbuts in lockstep.

He teaches me to clean the leadpipe

and oil the valves while we listen

to the radio, waiting for the news

of who will lead our country now.