The Blues
I hold my face in my hands & give
My sorrows to those brilliant moaners:
Blind Lemon, Tommy Johnson, Robert Johnson
& Yes, I shake my head yes, remembering
An empty bed, a gap-toothed smile,
A train rolling from the platform,
The suitcase in my hand, searching for my gal.
I grow ram's hair, a tongue thick as hootch-assisted sorrow,
Am walking to Chicago to dine on sawdust
& drink canned heat in a one-room shack waiting for Jesus
To deal out judgement like a deck of cards.
I’m down on my knees, Lord,
Looking up the store-bought skirt
Of Bessie Death, the poison, Lord,
Sanctifying my brief & furious life.
I’ll go outside & sleep face-down in a snowdrift
My guitar in a pawnshop on 21st & Fayette,
Furious husbands pounding on the door,
Frantic to pluck the secret of my gift
From a black mouth caged but not imprisoned by six strings.
Bluesmen tell me
“Good woman’s hard to find.”
Their spirit voices crackling
From the speaker. Imprisoned
In the body’s needs long after
The body falls away -
They leave behind a residue, a smoky yowl,
A dull knife weaving through space:
Mallarmé’s parole essentielle, perhaps,
Or only a “Yaz Yaz Yaz.”
Page(s) 146
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