Jazz Poems

LADY SINGS THE BLUES

Satin luscious, amber Beauty ceter-stage;

garden in her hair. If flowers could sing

they’d sound like this. That legendary scene:

the lady unpetals her song, the only light

in a room of smoke, nightclub tinkering

with lovers in the dark, cigarette flares,

gin & tonic. This is where the heartache

blooms. Forgot the holes

zippered along her arms. Forget the booze.

Center-stage, satin-tongue dispels a note.

Amber amaryllis, blue chanteuse, Amen.

If flowers could sing they’d sound like this.

                         *     *     *

This should be Harlem, but it’s not.

It’s Diana Ross with no Supremes.

Fox Theater, Nineteen Seventy-something.

Ma and me; lovers crowded in the dark.

The only light breaks on the movie-screen.

I’m a boy, but old enough to know Heartache.

We watch her rise and wither

like a burnt-out cliche. You know the story:

Brutal lush. Jail-bird. Scag queen.

In the asylum scene, the actresses’s eyes

are bruised; latticed with blood, but not quite sad

enough. She’s the star so her beauty persists.

Not like Billie fucked-up satin, hair museless,

heart ruined by the end.

                         *     *     * The houselights wake and nobody’s blue but Ma.

Billie didn’t sound like that, she says

as we walk hand in hand to the street.

Nineteen Seventy-something,

My lady hums, Good Morning Heartache,

My father’s in a distant place.

TERRANCE HAYES

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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