Atlantic, Chess, Stax

 

Frankie Crocker and WBLS

 

Voices shattering windows

 

You gave those gifts to me

 

No Wednesday night CBS suburban twin bed brotherly scuffle

 

This was Brooklyn hot knife edge balance

 

My eyes sweating fear watching your fingers dance along the blade

 

D train wheels wailing call and response as you turned the volume up

 

Reed and skin, bleeding chords and harmonies

 

Memphis, Detroit, Mississippi, Mobile, Harlem

 

Raising roofs, stakes and desire

 

Closing my eyes, I see twitching toes on Brighton Beach

 

Comic book muscle builders watching girls bounce in the surf

 

In a few months you will throw a football into my shaky hands

 

The sound of crunching leaves under my feet staying with me

 

Later, when you throw a dart into my soft stomach

 

Laughing as a track of blood broadens underneath my t-shirt

 

Midnight listening to Coltrane and Puente

 

Covers the wound in darkness and urgency

 

Between sets I find a way

 

Guided by Otis and Dizzy, sheets of flatted fifths waving in an ocean breeze

 

A child led out of a three room maze of a salesman’s and gypsy’s unnoted decay

 

Into the frightening joy of the different