Jazz Poems

JELLY WROTE

jelly wrote, 

                      you should be walking on four legs

                      but now you’re walking on two,

                      you know you come directly from the

                                    animal famulee

& you do. but dr jive

the winding boy, whose hands only work

was music & pushing

“certain ignorant light skin women” to the corner

was never animal

was never beast in storeyville, refining

a touch for ivory on pool green

with the finest of whorehouse ragtime; use even

for the “darker niggers music. rough,” jelly wrote

“but they loved it in the tenderloin.”

o the tall & chancey, the ladies’

fancy, the finest boy for miles around,

“your salty dog,” but with diamond incisors,

shooting the agate under a stetson sky

his st louis flats winked into

aaah, mr jelly

A.B. Spellman 

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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