Some Observations on Jazz
Bredt Bredthauer
Although it was hot beneath the sheets
of smoke, I listened to the staggered
notes cascading from his tenor sax.
They were sharp enough to draw blood.
Raw enough to rise with half-valve glissandos
and full-bodied clarion blows. Drenched in sweat,
bent beneath the burden of sound,
an imperfect gesture that anticipates
the unknown, I bared my arms
and plunged into the past. Into a time
when jazz drove dancers to their feet,
pulsating rhythms inflamed the mind
like opiates, and musicians died
from pneumonia brought on
by an excess of bootleg gin.
In that moment, I learned that music begins
with air. A war between what makes us human
and what divine. Through recognition I heard
the body's ancient beat. A ritual
that takes over long after
hunger is satisfied.
It is the same in every language.
One must descend in order to emerge.
Amends
-for Anna Akhmatova and Dax Riggs
Edward Casey
Carlos once showed me how to step
into daylight so that I could know:
the sun is more
than just a hole in the sky.
We approached the grave purposefully,
Carlos with the pick,
the shovel, trudging
just enough behind me to ensure
I would not divert,
or launch myself from the graveyard.
It was enough to lift my feet.
and Carlos kisses the stillness
out of the exhumed,
directs me to lift it,
to cradle it like an infant
that might one day resuscitate me.
and we relive its vacant past:
the heat, the hopelessness of infancy.
Today I would unlock the door,
roll down a window, and release
the sun’s ardent children
and this one.
Tomorrow Carlos and I will cradle it
to my family and kneel
at their door,
lift the undead remains high
and beg that they see what I have overcome.
The Sun and the Blues
Adam Henry Carriere
Soul's a big deal with me.
Any chump can drive
Motown wheels;
it takes a real you man to groove
'cross the
dancing a thousand dances
with a real whoo man
on sweet Stax of wax.
After you tasted soul stew,
all your dreams wanna drink
is the sun and the blues
playing like a skipping juke
like memories, over
An entire day for one word. 68 times. The word is love. His hands are not rat-traps, He will fly home. Shaven with pressed slacks. and sat and swelled and rushed -- Sure, he had grown up But when we came upon that little capsized boat then crossed himself... spraying me with sea mist before whispering a lullaby it would chasse each moment If my heart could dance only you
That's the Beale breadbasket, man
Elizabeth Neely Clauser (2 poems)
Armadillo Stalking
It’s only a shell when I first see it,
some exotic oversize
but it crackles through the underbrush
like a city dweller trying to hike
country trails. From its mini
dinosaur armor peers a blind
possum face, intent on snuffling
out its grub from under leaves and between
the blades of browned prairie grass.
My nearing steps make its ears twitch—
mule stumps tucked on in afterthought.
Its sound sense feeds the tiny brain
more than the non-sense of its pig eye,
but not as much as its snout sniffing the air.
Alarmed at my crunching feet
it rises from the stench of my presence—
no fist clenched against the sky—
but claws quickly grounded. It bounds
like a deer fleeing zig-zag with a flash
of its tail—a mesh of rat and serpent.
For EBV
You’ve done the bird-at-feeder poems,
but when I sit with my seven-week son
on the porch step to calm the fussies,
the birds come. We watch junior
cardinal who’s made it through
his teens and perches in the live oak
with his freedom fire song that makes
William punch out his fisted arms
from his green blanket. The bobbin-noggin
dove pecks simply and flusters
when neighbors get too close. Its cry
is like William’s and my ears reach out
of their sockets to hear which.
I’ve cleared the side bed of its leaf
quilt; the Mainacht soothes purple
and Four-nerve Daisy hangs on golden
while the mulch steams in the rain.
We welcome even the pollen strewn
across the brick—sneezes don’t scare me.
Opposite of Hate
Colin Gilbert
Hundreds of years ago Japanese haiku master Basho
would gaze upon a single flower for an entire day
in hopes one of 17 characters would emerge.
Imagine life as that flower. A poet sits
upon a grassy path beside you. He ponders
each word 9 hours. "Real poetry,"
said Basho, "is to lead a beautiful life.
To live poetry is better than to write it."
68 times I lived a life with you today.
The Difference in Daylight and Dawn
Chelsea Hill
His hands are rat traps.
Each of his fingers, a trigger—snapping.
As he reaches out to feel her skin
He sees her walk away,
sincerely hopes she doesn’t cut her bare feet
on the evidence.
He longs to touch her bitter wind
But he doesn’t account for the consequences.
rather—they are rusty ropes,
If he could manipulate them--
John Wayne and his lasso,
ideals of masculinity.
The coarse line of his finger extends
Echoes words of his Grandmother
she silenced the monster
tormenting him now,
but
can he use
Her mirror, that legacy,
to navigate those
rough waters
of fatigue and anxiety.
Awake in the afternoon.
Of course she will return—his hands
will regain their humanity..
He was once arresting, his strong arms
striving in motion.
But the bottle calls too:
“You love me, but not the fight."
We can still be friends, alright?”
His gloves, watch his every move
Silent sponsor.
The twine will eventually knot.
Condors
Min Kang
The sun doesn’t set when it’s summer
in the tundra. That’s when young lemmings
are born, small and tan like their mothers,
they multiply and spread like makeshift
creeks that crack on the pale arctic moss.
Against the brittle cliffs, a family,
all in white, make noise. Round, ravenous
chicks wait, fight for pieces of lemming,
but their father arrives from the fields below
with no meat in his beak. The
lemmings have grown too fat and sturdy
for the smaller male. Mother Condor—behind
her dinosaur eyes, she does not think
much before she spans her bones for her leap.
Blue Norther
David Knape
striking
without warning
a blue norther comes in
mean and hard and blustering
barging in
like unwanted company
the sky makes a line
marked by blue
defined with clear distinction
as if someone had divided it
drawn a line across it
behind it is the norther
barreling down
forcing its way in
banging screen doors
rattling windows
shaking shingles
the sky turns dark
menacing clouds come in
and the temperature drops like a rock
abruptly turning a switch
ice is in the air
a chill runds down your back
all the way to your toes
and you feel it in your bones
artic air
packed in ice
with nails and needles
blown down from Oklahoma
Kansas
Canada
sweeping in with angry daggers
what was once a nice autumn day
with warmth and golden sunshine
is now brought to its knees
by the invading intruder
with howling winds and biting coldness
an ugly disposition
trash cans go flying
birds retreat
people run inside
to test their furnaces
hoping they come on
wishing they had bought wood
and leaves fly off
like frightened children
running away
down deserted roads
chased by the wind.
Karla K. Morton (2 poems)
Christmas at Love Field
They called it the swarming season --
that mild
when the birds gather
like big black nets in the sky
-- hundreds of them --
simultaneously hovering and circling;
then suddenly swooping down to the earth,
then repositioning, then rising back up,
and around; then landing once more
over and over again,
until instinct kicked in
and they collectively swelled up together,
and flew away,
each going to the sanctuary of their own nests...
And inside the airport,
swarms of people came and gathered,
all beckoned by the pull of the season;
by that ancient, instinctual homing-call
of Christmas.
San Nicola Intercessions
The Captain insisted he was a modern man --
not weakened by all the superstitions
of his fellow Italians down in
learning, and reading, and wishing on
the saints and the stars of the sailors,
but this was the new world
of mathematics, and computers, and high-tech electronics,
and he was a schooled man --
too skeptical and too educated
to still believe in such old-world magic...
Christmas morning --
500 miles too far west
between
he ordered search and rescue maneuvers,
and dispatched his crew,
and alerted the Coast Guard...
his hands,
unconsciously deploying saintly aide
to the lost seamen;
his heart,
still hoping for a Christmas miracle...
My Mother's
Kristina Maria Rogers
That evening I walked
along the sapphire, cobblestone
Calle de Cristo admiring
the three-story-high buildings
at either side of me
like a continuous wall
of art painted to reflect
the bright green of a ripe quenepa,
the dazzling red of an acerola,
the brilliant orange of a chironja,
and the glittering purple of the inside of a caimito...
Illuminated lights, like sparkling
skittles, dangled above
from one rooftop across to another,
twinkling stars caught between...
I passed the panaderia and cantina
and the man selling piraguas
straight to the palm-covered Parque de Palomas
to feed the doves as I looked out at the sea...
A young Caribbean cruise ship
glided into El Caño de
as the aged fortress,
El Morro, watched silently
from where it sat
enthroned upon the hill,
battle scars still intact,
a glorified conquistador...
As I looked out across the vibrant water
I heard it hum out to me
a melody all too familiar
like one given before a dream
from my mother's soft lips
when she would put me to sleep...
I was on the beach in a heartbeat,
the pallid powdery sand beneath my bare feet
as I gazed upon the sinking sun
as it slowly set downward
beyond the cerulean horizon
soaking up every rising and falling note...
The pulse of the
within my core as the waves
washed up onto the shore
rushing across the sand,
splashing against the rocks,
and crashing into them
with snowy foam swirling all about...
Then suddenly came sweeping
a zypher fanning out my hair,
it had carried from a nearby famous
and tiny green singer of the night
coquí, coquí , coquí ...
O Rolls of Gaudy Contact Paper, How You Contaminate
Joseph R. Trombatore
Didn't much care about getting up at 4
loved his feather pillows, his quilt
the vibrant colors of his dreams
He meditated on a life in city splendor
promenade not in squares, but in pinstripe
something slick like gabardine
The sun burning crisp a face that once loved, hard
but she was frail; a pie left on the sill too long
now a field of buttercups
Weary of monsoons, & a summer's drought
hay baler, tractor, forever belching clouds of black
another year's worth of prayers, of seed to scatter
The stench of pigs, the egg enriched snakes
hooves of horses, boundaries stitched in barbed wire
the midnight spotlight of another full moon
Yearned to be a high roller
fan of opera & aria
possibly even of musicals & Merlot
Yet on his tombstone, among hills he named
would be writ -
Ee
I
Ee
I
O
To The One Who Has Loved Me Without Transgression
Jena
I would kiss your lips regardless
of the wintry cold settled on them
or the white-hot heat of starlight
that burns within your gaze
I would chase your heart, impervious
to the jarring tethers of my mortality-
the chains that won't permit me
to catch your rising dawn
If My Heart Could Dance
Bret Wooten
If my heart could dance…
of perfect elegance and grace
a Ballet of symbiotic motion
one of two, two of one
one step no less perfect than the rest
it would twist and turn
submit and dominate
an intense fury, a Tango
we two would embrace
it would show my power
your control, our fervor
a rhythmic Salsa of push and pull
we would lose ourselves
or it would glide slow
a Waltz, its passionate caress
soaked in sweat
we would plunge ourselves
slow and subdued, timeless
it would dance with you