The Bass Line
Dakota Staton came late at night,
pulling off her long gloves, Bill Hardman
in his porkpie hat, Charles Davis
cracking his swollen knuckles.
There was small talk,
a cousin bought a drink,
the E string tightened, a keyboard
slithered over chromatic seconds,
then the players began to disappear
into time as into a fire
and it was just the deserted saloon:
Harmon Killebrew on the screen,
sawdust on the floor, a Schlitz globe,
a few vets in crimped caps
talking of Inchon, or a lost marriage—
that late, you could make up childhood—
smoke-threads rose from ashtrays,
the barman yawned, toward dawn
the musicians began to resurface,
a finger on a valve, a pulsing throat,
a hand pulling a weighted rag
through the tenor’s brass bore
and we left telling each other
that was amazing, but what was it?
It was snowing, the few blocks
to Dekalb were treacherous, already
a panhandler waited at Gates,
speechless with cold, his tin cup
radiant with gray snow.
Surgery
Still a child, I have to enter old age
and find my way through the dim hospitals,
lobbies, waxed corridors, Lysol wards,
sometimes a courtyard with a sculpture
that symbolizes a remote part of the body—
prostate, urethra: there I meet the sacred doctors,
masked so their radiance won’t kill me,
mirrors on their foreheads, white gloves
that twitch like cats, and they call my name
sternly, though I’m still in short pants,
wearing the beanie with the stalled propellor.
Watch how I make my Duncan yo-yo sleep.
Others may plummet, twirl and soar.
I stand in midair and wait for nothing.