Grey Sparrow Journal

Summer 2010, Issue 5

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TWO POEMS
 
by Cutter Streeby
 
 
JAZZ FUGUE

 

Miles found tracer-round melodies in the blood of Moon Dreams,

           a cadence where  her  voice plays

                      like a jazz pamphlet

his trumpet was crunching gravel that followed my feet, raising an army of ghost-dancers.

            loaded F minor bullets.

 

she sang a guerrilla war against the darkness that made us

                         muted trumpet barrels trilling before

a young army. my axe blasted cool-tones into a creosote sky where

            she is a Harlem dancer. hard-up.

                        a gauntlet of street light and

fucking or fighting were hymns to the same thing,

           shooting the silence of fog with

the bow of her hips. a peace treaty stripping me of scars

                        with passion smoother than any Kind of Blue

 

I remembered when music

             memory, like broken-time sax solos

drifted through me and returned into the night

 

Syncopated.

            Syncopated.

                        Syncopated. 

 

 

 

 

Pigeons

 

 

flat saxophone tones under the bridge 
in Piccadilly, a Saint wears an onyx New Moon under each fingernail  
rich as a real artist plugged into past and future  
his wires of dreadlocks hang like ivory jewelry 


she is Empress of Ethiopia 
she is envoy to pigeons weaving incantations from the shoestrings of God 
she is building a nest for mankind and martyred each morning  
immolated in feather-flames, she is sacrificed  
open palms to the sky, a human roost

  

sunset breaks her in two and a shower of humanity flows up from outstretched arms

gorged with the flesh of poems 

 

      Jazz out of an open doorway-- 
      Pigeons 
      in a London street
       

       

I watch from my perch on a park bench, glad to be alive.

 

 

 

 

© Cutter Streeby, Jazz Fugure and Pigeons, 2010 

© Miles David, Clip Art