Jazz Dirge in 5/4 by Linda Bryant

Liver wrecked
from whiskey
& brew, he rents
in Joliet. $219
a week & never can

swing the last. Joey
& I talk jazz & the best
Chicago Deep Dish. I know
it won’t be long 

& we’re all laughs. If
our past has its own
scale it’s bebop
harmonic minor with
that chromatic

switch at the end. I cheer
when Hendrix pours lighter
fluid on his Strat;
but not Joey. He’s far

gone on Dizzy,
Thelonious & Duke.  I conjure
the funeral he’ll never
be given, envision
I’m spinning Miles for him—

Bitch’s Brew, Green in Blue. Vinyl
scratches linger
on top of a long, slow
tune. He jabbers

about scent & taste
& I sit with him
like kin. Like an aquifer
under bedrock his sister’s
anger interrupts. I get why

she turned on him—his wild
blood scorched her—
but I’m not as close. He keeps
calling, says, “Pick me up

a Reuben, a pack
of smokes.” End stage
liver failure means
a few bites
a day. Hallucinations

gather like friends
& he’s back
on the sax. There’s a girl
& he’s cashing

in. I offer two bites
of a loaded baked
potato. He rumbles out
a mmmmmmm sound, praises
the butter’s hot drip, the spud’s

steaming white & the rough
gold-brown of the skin, which he says
is sweet & gritty like slow hot
jazz & dirt.

 
Linda Bryant published widely as a career journalist for over 30 years before devoting herself to poetry. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times and won two national writing fellowships.  She lives in Bighill, Kentucky, where she operates Owsley Fork Writers Sanctuary.