paper • 78 pages • 13.95
ISBN-10: 1-884800-30-0

Lush

Frazier Russell

 

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.