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From "Through the Stonecutter's Window"
winner of the Inaugural Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize
Glass
I vowed never again to cross
that street. But the snake charmer
laid his flute along my spine.
Sodium light painted my shadow crooked
across the restaurant’s plate glass,
my breath quickening against the pane.
Inside, mint teas, incense, and spices
tinted the air. A belly dancer timed
finger cymbals and a coined sash
to a Baglama’s dulcet strumming.
Hand-woven tapestries thickened the walls’
tugging at their connecting studs.
Couches crouched low and sensuous—
every divan and ottoman adorned
with scented pillows and entwined legs.
She and I were only here once I reminded
myself. Still, the music pulsed the glass
beneath my fingers as hookah pipes
rose and fell like empires, like longing.
From "Tap-Root"
Main Street Rag 2006
(audio) Back Through the Storm Door
I left the South broken, a busted wing
and a crooked eye. Still, I wake mornings
with the taste of honeysuckle on my tongue.
The phone rings; voices weary with traveling;
wires weighed down with crows and thick heat.
The South, calling me to christen the born or bury
the dead— Lord, I’m still addicted to its touch:
He doesn’t have long. If you’re
going to come, it better be soon.
In bed hours later, my mind still
taloned to the phone’s bad news.
Weed, codeine, scotch. I’ve ingested enough
fog and brain-ash to black out the moon.
But the crucible of the past is relentless,
grinding behind eyelids. Memories spark
wild along the nerves’ telegraph. The lens
focuses backwards and the mind grays decades.
I dream my past a fragmented play, spliced
together with rawhide ties and silk thread.
It grows claws and jumps the stage: a beast
my hands don’t know how to tame.
There is no balm for the past’s dull ache.
When the blue jay rolls up his song,
the whole damn world spins down on me,
falling back through the door,
I’m broken again.
Excerpt from "Hymns for the Damned"
Chapter 4: The Bone Blues
“‘Til I die!” came the words, slurred and drained of civility. His glass raised, Joe leaned against the main bar of the Blue Heron Club. It was past 11 pm, which meant he was drunk, but not nearly as drunk as he pretended to be. Like a rat slinking through the crowd, Joe swayed to and fro, sizing up the patrons, seeing who was naive enough to think him the fool, seeing who was ripe for picking another day. Bourbon streamed down the sleeve of his expensive suit. Prohibition had often knocked at the entrance to the Blue Heron, but never made it through the door. Money found its way into the sheriff’s pockets and the flow of beer and whiskey continued.
“‘Til I die!” Joe shouted, his voice screeching up an octave, slicing through the crowd’s reverence. The patrons never turned to look at Joe. At best, they only leaned their heads slightly in his direction. Their eyes stayed locked to the stage where Jeshimon played his steel National guitar, fingers threading a tune through the crowd until they swayed together, seamlessly. Throughout the crowd rose soft murmurs and throaty moans. A slow rising Delta breeze gently twirled the curtains high in the windows as Jeshimon played the blues, played the room, played the town.
“Til I die!” yelled Joe, stagger-dancing past black cloth-covered tables, through the packed room to the front of the club. He leaned on the stage, draping himself on the valance— ruby-red, the same color as his suit. “That’s how long it’s gon’ be you and me, Jeshimon! ‘Til I die!”
Jeshimon held center stage as he had for the past six months. Skillfully, he allowed Amazing Grace to flow from the edge of his bottleneck slide. The notes rose from his finger, traveled up the string and teased the edge of the glass before drifting out into the crowd to mingle with the near silence. He ignored Joe prostrated at his feet, empty glass rolling across the worn maple floor. Jeshimon saw neither the crowd nor the room. His focus was straight ahead, gaze fixed on the bar as if he had written the notes in the billowing smoke trapped above the liquor bottles.
Outside in the sodium lights, the ticking of the large clock tower above Town Hall filled the empty roads. The fog was drifting in, dragging the Mississippi’s heavy scent up and down the packed dirt streets. The clock hands met high, squeezing the last seconds of the day from Klemwood. Out the backdoor of the Heron came a fast boy. He ran the breathy length of cold, damp dirt from the club to the bookie joint, where he reported the number to be six and the type to be ebony. Money was paid to the winners, amidst a chorus of curses from the losers. Talk of a fix was muttered beyond earshot of the bookie’s sandalwood revolvers. At the Blue Heron, six different guitar slides had come and gone, slipping in and out of Jeshimon’s long overcoat like cards from a magician’s sleeve. The first was a sensuous brass slide that had eased up the National’s neck, like a finger caressing a woman’s neck; Tommy Johnson’s “Big Fat Momma Blues” moaned throughout. A solid granite slide brought Mississippi John Hurt’s “Ain’t No Tellin’” down on the crowd like razor-edged goose down, soft and sharp, beckoning and deadly. Mahogany for Rich Amerson, bright steel for Charlie Patton, and, finally, ebony for Eddie “Son” House, cut with the thick pearl-handled blade Jeshimon bought up north under a midnight sun that refused to dip below the ancient pines as long as he kept playing.