Poetry Magazine, J Witherspoon Huey, February 2001

Poetry Magazine

J. Witherspoon Huey

USA

For Sad Jazz?

The old basketball hoop, an erectile dysfunction slammed one too many times, now hangs limp, lonely, and forlorn
above cracked blacktop court
where no children play in perfect
sunshine-blue sky afternoon,
of after school energy

The lights are out, and the elevator is stuck,
and I suspect that someone has broken wind,

Oh Rapunzell, where art thou?
Let down thy golden hair from heaven,
that I might wrap it round my naked body
and dissolve in ambiguity

Single mothers, in poor neighborhoods
have far more pressing concerns,
than the yard of the month award,
they must all be goddess’s
bending time between early
donut shop shift, and the late shift
at the medical center, to intimate
precious thoughts passed down
from generation to generation,
from one epoch to the next,
all the way back to the original
mother, who’s womb was time beginning
who’s skin was dark unlike mine,
and beautiful, and brown eyes
figs & flowers in Euphrates,
far, far away from black nights
in parking lots clutching mace
& pepper spray,
from cat-calls on perilous streets
of dusky twilight, from sobbings
on hotel floors, and images
and images and images bombarding
innocence on billboard tv magazine
advertisements,

Original mother, and original beauty,
no longer walking naked among us,
but changing sheets in hospital room,
taking orders in the drive through lane,
serving coffee to wandering nomads
in frontier trucker outposts along
infinite highways always leading back,
back, back, to pure innocence of
original human manifestation
and no leaves or other vegetation
covering womb, vagina, pubis,
no clouds blocking perfect primordial sunset,
no sirens wailing clutter clunk clank.