An engaging collection of "jazz poems" by a wide
range of Twentieth Century poets, this special issue of ABRAXAS
(#20), illustrated with photos and printed on fine paper, is now
in its third printing.
Three selections from Bright Moments: A Collection of Jazz Poetry:
Bessie Smith's Funeral
The brief procession.
The crude gray church that pegs the bend
Of a river. After brisk december air
Smoke-white walls,
An artless trim of brown,
Windows adorned
Except for what of fields beyond
The eye can trace on dusty panes.
Chafed by fiery oration
That rains on salamandered ears,
Naked bulbs retreat
From slaking so much darkness, turn
To dalliance with lilies and a casket
Textured to the dime-store toy that reins
The impish hands of a child close by.
Spirits are abroad in the splintery pews,
Restless in the drafty aisles, will not
Give way to order of service, to such
Superfluous mourning:
One, a burly chantress with a song,
Balks the yokeless choir that grates
The lily-scented air;
Her song is news, begins the dispensation
Of the blues.
--Alvin Aubert
Yardbird's Skull (for Charlie Parker)
The bird is lost,
Dead, with all the music:
Whole sunsets heard the brain's music
Faded to last horizon notes.
I do not know why I hold
This skull, smaller than a walnut's,
Against my ear,
Expecting to hear
The smashed fear
Of childhood from . . . bone;
Expecting to see
Wind nosing red and purple,
Strange gold and magic
On bubbled windowpanes
Of childhood. Shall I hear?
I should hear: this skull
Has been with violets
Not Yorick, or the gravedigger,
Yapping his yelling story,
This skull has been in air,
Sensed his brother, the swallow
(Its talent for snow and crumbs).
Flown to lost Atlantis islands,
Places of dreaming, swimming lemmings.
O I shall hear skull skull,
Hear your lame music,
Believe music rejects undertaking,
Limps back.
Remember tiny lasting, we get lonely:
Come sing, come sing, come sing sing
And sing.
--Owen Dodson
Catching Fire
Everywhere gutter musicians with rare saxophones
rise in the air like snowy egrets.
The night wolf drifts
on a coffin nailed with stars.
A man in an alley unravels
the feathers of a woman's body.
From the firmament above the rooftops
a hand rockets loose,
catching fire in the snow.
The one window, steam-laved with your breath,
splinters to moths,
the last white flutter of a brooding routine.
Heaven enough for one night.
By the jetty, a child rocks like a tide.
The moon is a bright town
risen from a hillside
leaving an emptiness in our lives
to either orbit or sink.
The child's cry nags the darkness into an orange
while I sit on a flight of stairs inside a bottle
and my heart rejoices over you, spilling out.
My desires are a crowd.
You are the best crowd-pleaser in sight.
The best landscape is you on your back.
The prettiest flowers, your legs in the air.
--Jack Marshall
