LITMIR.BIZ

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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 sign says, No Talking.

      Elvin’s guardian angel lingers

      at the top of the stairs,

      counting each drop of sweat

      paid in tribute. The blonde

      has her eyes closed, & the brunette

      is looking at me. Our bodies

      sway to each riff, the jasmine

      rising from a valley somewhere

      in Egypt, a white moon

      opening countless false mouths

      of laughter. The midnight

      gatherers are boys & girls

      with the headlights of trucks

      aimed at their backs, because

      their small hands refuse to wound

      the knowing scent hidden in each bloom.

      GINGKOES

      When I retrace our footsteps

      to Bloomington I recall talking jazz,

      the half-forgotten South

      in our mouths, the reptilian

      brain swollen with manly regrets

      left behind, thumbing volumes

      inscribed to the dead in used

      bookstores, & then rounding

      griffins carved into limestone.

      The gingkoes dropped fruit

      at our feet & an old woman

      scooped the smelly medicine

      into a red plastic bucket,

      laughing. We walked across

      the green reciting Hayden,

      & I still believe those hours

      we could see through stone.

      I don’t remember the girls

      in summer dresses strolling

      out of the movie on Kirkwood,

      but in the Runcible Spoon

      sniffing the air, Cat Stevens

      on a speaker, we tried to buy

      back our souls with reveries

      & coffee, the scent of bathos

      on our scuffed shoes.

       —for Christopher Gilbert

      TENEBRAE

      May your spirit sleep in peace One grain of corn can fill the silo. —the Samba of Tanzania

      You try to beat loneliness

      out of a drum,

      but cries only spring

      from your mouth.

      Synapse & memory—

      the day quivers like dancers

      with bells on their feet,

      weaving a path of songs

      to bring you back,

      to heal our future

      with the old voices

      we breathe. Sometimes

      our hands hang like weights

      anchoring us inside

      ourselves. You can go

      to Africa on a note

      transfigured into a tribe

      of silhouettes in a field

      of reeds, & circling the Cape

      of Good Hope you find

      yourself in Paris

      backing The Hot Five.

      You try to beat loneliness

      out of a drum.

      As you ascend

      the crescendo,

      please help us touch what remains

      most human. Your absence

      brings us one step closer

      to the whole cloth

      & full measure.

      We’re under the orange trees again, as you work life

      back into the double-headed

      drumskin with a spasm

      of fingertips

      ’til a chant leaps

      into the dreamer’s mouth.

      You try to beat loneliness

      out of a drum, always

      coming back to opera & baseball.

      A constellation of blood-tuned

      notes shake against the night

      forest bowed to the ground

      by snow & ice. Yes,

      this kind of solitude

      can lift you up

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