for his canvas.
I hold your red shoes,
one in each hand to balance
the sky, because Duke
loved Toulouse-Lautrec’s
nightlife. Faces of women
woven into chords scribbled
on hotel stationery—blues,
but never that unlucky
green. April 29th
is also my birthday,
the suspicious wishbone
snapped between us,
& I think I know why
a pretty woman always
lingered at the bass
clef end of the piano.
Tricky Sam coaxed
an accented wa-wa
from his trombone, coupled
with Cootie & Bubber,
& Duke said, Rufus,
give me some ching-chang
& sticks on the wood.
I tell myself the drum
can never be a woman,
even if her name’s whispered
across skin. Because
nights at the Cotton Club
shook on the bone,
because Paul Whiteman
sat waiting for a riff
he could walk away with
as feathers twirled
among palm trees, because
Duke created something good
& strong out of thirty pieces
of silver like a spotlight
on conked hair,
because so much flesh
is left in each song,
because women touch
themselves to know
where music comes from,
my fingers trace
your lips to open up
the sky & let in
the night.
WOMAN, I GOT THE BLUES
I’m sporting a floppy existential sky-blue hat
when we meet in the Museum of Modern Art.
Later, we hold each other
with a gentleness that would break open
ripe fruit. Then we slow-drag
to Little Willie John, we bebop
to Bird LPs, bloodfunk, lungs paraphrased
’til we break each other’s fall.
For us there’s no reason the scorpion
has to become our faith healer.
Sweet Mercy, I worship
the curvature of your ass.
I build an altar in my head.
I kiss your breasts & forget my name.
Woman, I got the blues.
Our shadows on floral wallpaper
struggle with cold-blooded mythologies.
But there’s a stillness in us
like the tip of a magenta mountain.
You’re half-naked on the living-room floor
when the moon falls through the window
on you.
Your breath’s a dewy flower stalk
leaning into sweaty air.
JASMINE
I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin’s sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
South, how I’d cross the street
if a woman like these two walked
towards me, as if a cat traversed
my path beneath the evening star.
Which one is wearing jasmine?
If my grandmothers saw me now
they’d say, Boy, the devil never sleeps.
My mind is lost among November
cotton flowers, a soft rain on my face
as Richard Davis plucks the fat notes
of chance on his upright
leaning into the future.
The blonde, the brunette—
which one is scented with jasmine?
I can hear Duke in the right hand
& Basie in the left
as the young piano player
nudges us into the past.
The trumpet’s almost kissed
by enough pain. Give him a few more years,
a few more ghosts to embrace—Clifford’s
shadow on the edge of the stage.
The
