paper • 78 pages • 13.95
ISBN-10: 1-884800-30-0
GOSPEL
Supine on the sofa
this hump of summer night,
lupine outside,
listening low
to Miles’s lush republic of trumpet
on It Never Entered My Mind.
Outside my window,
fireflies & clouds:
perfume by the bucket
in a five-and-dime sky.
& I am lucky enough I know,
black-eyed peas & peppers roasting on the stove
& Miles’s horn punching its sweet puissant hole,
blowing nuance
with his thimbleful of notes,
eased like water from a dropper
this moon & ju-ju night
just me & my soul
like a Fuller Brush man
broke down on his way through the Badlands
& no one knows it.
Like Miles told:
it’s all in the withholding.
What you don’t give up
you get back ten-fold,
so saith he of the bump & tongue–
here endeth the Gospel.