HungryBlues

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Winter. 1969

(for my father)

At the hospital room window. You, watching the headlights
On FDR Drive, the way to the co-ops,
The view of Essex, the public bath brimming now with snow, later
With sounds of children, rising from the water—
My voice soon among them. Before any of this,
Blur of helicopter blades overhead, vacant blue.
You decide yes there is a god, on the stretcher, there in Korea.
In any case, you return.
Five years pass. Along the glistening curb,
Piles of wet yellow leaves. It gets colder.
The first daughter born.
Then the second born. Then a decade;
The dark lifting from the beds of the two daughters,
Your wife at the kitchen table, looking at an orange.
At the hospital room window, you see, out past the traffic,
White drifts settling on the frozen water.
Tonight, the East River, the lights of the city,
And the moon, things of beauty.
Starless, bituminous Manhattan—
At this hour, and the stilted oil tanks, blunt shapes
In the shallows, no current to resist, no wind.

Gorjus

(Sally Mann, b/w, 1989)

At most six, expressionless, back perfectly straight,
Her fingers loosely curled, fidgeting with the sheer white tulle
That veils her thighs, while the older girl
Maybe eight or nine pulls at the white lycra below the littler one’s
Neck and applies—is it
Eye makeup? rouge? the younger girl
Offering her cheek, her eyes straying to the bull-dog at the right edge
Or into the shadows that touch the beat-up Chevy pick-up.
The older girl in profile, eyes fixed on her work—
And neither looks at the blurry woods or the next open space.
Heels planted in the truck’s shadow, her toes, her white ruffled cotton dress and blonde hair
Splashed with light, and behind her, within reach, on the bumper, a lipstick, two compacts,
And, scattered in the darkened grass, a metal box full of combs,
An empty plastic bag, a mirror, a soft-bristled brush,
Other compacts, tins, tubes.
She is already so composed, this older one, back arched, hair pulled back,
Torso and head held just so: behind, the field,
Steady, slender wrist held across—

Festival Of Spring

Fridays we crossed the George Washington Bridge
to sit at her table.
Each time, she said, as if sure
he would forget, “Sol, what about the boy?
Give the boy his wine . . .”
Here she is:
my mother’s mother,
propped on the metal frame she pushes this way, through the grass.
On the bench, my grandfather sits behind an open NY Times—
my grandmother speaks for him.
Not even certain whom she speaks to,
she nonetheless says,
“Sol was wondering
When you’ll get a haircut . . .”
She is at her ease, now, outdoors, in her wheelchair,
the attendant beside her: at times
rising from her seat, as if to instruct or to remember—
the two of them chatting like dear friends.
Most of the trees are still bare.
The two women have coats on.
From the window, heat comes off
the stove coils.
At the far end of the yard
the dark pines sway.

Serenade

1.

The hospice nurse checks again
The water temperature.
Swelling in the hands,
The legs, the sensitive feet,
My father in the lift device
Shows no discomfort,
Even beams a little,
Looking at me.
Fluorescent light in the poster frames.
Around a breezy field, silver coastline . . .
The patient closes his eyes
And moans as he is washed.

2.

Dream #2: I pull into the driveway
With a gift for the dying man.
Pink blossoms crowd the rose bush.
At this point in the story,
The sun-bleached, unlovely petals
Should already have littered the lawn
And disappeared. Why these clusters
Around the light post, why still
These flowers hiding the metalwork?
The neighborhood is busy with autumn raking.
Call and response of bamboo, plastic, steel.
The sun shines. The cicadas drone.

3.

An autumn drive, the suburb’s decorative elms and poplars.
Then the rural scenery, the foliage all around.
Fiery reds, greens edged with yellow,
The sky cloudless, without depth.
Then the look out point, the destination.
From the open car window, a view of the Helderbergs.
At the guardrail, a boy throwing stones into the treetops, below,
Then the clamor of beating wings, a flight of starlings
Rising, dome shaped, then taking off
In every direction, the air cold, the dying man tired.

4.

Frank’s Orchestra had three records, six songs

Under-recorded, dumped on, taken advantage of
coming out of an orphan asylum in Virginia . . .

somebody heard the melody and made it into a hit

Frank’s melody
                                The Blues My Baby Gave To Me

Stolen, never made a penny on it

There’s no places like Minton’s
no clubs like Nick’s or The Savoy in Boston

I remember when I came to New York . . .

            sixteen years old, leaving Mom all alone in Brighton

. . . it was unbearable, Dad gone again
my brothers fighting in the War

The coincidence was I got to the City and kicked around
looking for a job, still trying to become a jazz musician
and worked in Greenwich Village in Jerry Newman’s record store
and Jerry gave me an acetate copy from his original
of the session at Monroe’s
all seven minutes and nineteen seconds

Frank, improvising Sweet Georgia Brown

This is it, this next one

My Father’s Dream

Frank Newton and Vic Dickenson
Are playing ping pong in the kitchen
From the window, Union Sq

Listen! it's Peewee Russell on the gramophone
Peewee got a letter all the way from China
To The Maker Of Heavenly Music
Nick's, USA

And the pennies we always threw, by the net, in the rug
Anybody who shows up with pennies
Throws them on the floor

Tonight we’ll get Chinese
Tonight we’ll roast marshmallows in the basement furnace
Tonight we’ll hear Vic and Frankie jam!
Vic's got his trombone at the door

We'll see you in the brightening
Yeah Frank, in the brightening

Night and Day

With my low rent and my solitude and my Bachelor's
in English, I'm on the West Coast, I'm getting religious
and I'm up to my elbows in dishwater
and I hear voices: Blessed art thou, God of our Fathers,
they say, chanting name after name, from Abraham
to the present, stopping predictably, at the name
of my father. Sunlight through the orange curtains
blotched whitish-brown, like a mishap from bleach—O Father,
these dishes are covered with suds! these greasy plates
and these pots with burnt food on the bottom and the slimy
peanut butter knives, the whole kitchen underwater,
its dark blue cabinets and sky blue ceiling
and the mobile with yellow fish. Outside, unclouded sky—
endless background for the plum tree, white blossoms
stretching over the sun-burned lawn—
O civil servant watching the world from the suburbs
in the East, New York City papers spread open
like maps on your desk, routes to Swing Street
and to Pizer and Dubinsky making their speeches—
it's 1992, the pale sky and plum blossoms like
ex-communists, denouncing poetry, refusing to talk,
the ghosts are talking, I hear you among them, "it doesn't get
better than this, this is heaven."

Lunch

I think even your Grandpa Ben was embarrassed
By how Grandma Gert clung to him when he showed up
At a bar-mitzvah. We’d heard he’d taken another name,
Married someone else, run another business,
But it was like he never left . . .
Once, I think I was eleven, she took me to meet him for lunch.
We stood outside the diner for nearly an hour.
When we saw him, she grabbed my arm,
I asked, “who’s he with,” but your grandma didn’t hear
And just pushed past everyone until we stood
In the path of the other two. “Who’re they, Ben?”
I heard the woman ask. “C’mon, keep walking,”
He said, and they were gone, so we
Went home. We never ate lunch.

Frank Gets Lucky

1.

Six years Sammy Price's mother handed towels at
Jimmy Ryan's hustling for tips. Then
one night she was on the bandstand
still in her work clothes suddenly
a blues singer—

Mean blues fairies stuck their forks in me
Made me moan and groan in misery—

and Frank like a circus bear
under the glaring lights—

2.

But on the trumpet,
like a night thrush: it was
a way of walking, talking.
Had it in his soul.
If Frank saw a secretary
typing fast—
that's her solo—

3.

He saw
his own life—

New York, 1939: The 3 Deuces,
The Onyx —

Or in Chinatown,
where a hardhat tried to play him
for a nickel—calling
Christmas gift
Christmas gift

He looked up as it fell—
the girders
strung with lights

Or on Swing Street,
where a guy in uniform buys him
a whiskey because
"his color doesn't matter
when he plays"—

4.

He couldn't keep quiet.
Sammy's mother under the lights,
her amazing voice
filling the house.
They dragged her out to sing but still paid her
to clean the crap house.
Said it
right on the mike—

And when he knocked out
the serviceman
Pete Brown, Maxine Sullivan,
John Kirby
all rushed down from the stage—

But I remember Frank
crying and crying
I didn't do him any good
I didn't do him any good