| Helen Ruggieri USA
JAZZ ON A SUMMER AFTERNOON: NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL 1958 Jerry Mulligan is playing - the audience watches through cat's eye glasses, shades, man, crew cuts, pretty women in the half light glazed with August, jazz in all their indications. Anita O'Day is singing "Sweet Georgia Brown" perfectly pitched into the folding chairs from the column of her black sheath; she releases from her reedy throat each pitch the band must mock each note a scatty inspiration. If I'm born again, I'll have that voice, the strength of a B flat clarinet, the upper reaches of a saxophone. She could not have been invented without a perfect metal music to match herself against. In the aisles couples begin to dance the intricate jitterbug of cool and my muscles tense for each spin and turn, remembering those moves as if they were tattooed, indelible. The body's memory, balance tied to unarticulated longings - to be rich, to be smart, to be there, the empty aisle, ours, splendidly lit for evening, as we move as we must under the capering moths. I want that music with me everywhere, my feet sliding and pivoting, my voice pitched out across the front in tune with everything. appeared originally in POEM MYRTLE’S WHEAT Smelling of piss and new turned earth Myrtle leans across the aisle, shows me the head of wheat she drew. I see wheat for the first time, how it slants over the paper, beard flaring off the edge. Each oval seed is lined in brown holding a slim, dusky filament perfectly balanced, closer than I ever knew to look. I see how she sees and she sees deep. The surface of my world breaks - the first iron plow cutting the prairie. appeared in the chapbook Glimmer Girls by Mayapple Press UNDER THE ARBOR On hot afternoons we'd sit on the dry packed earth under the grape vines, pick off woody tendrils, make rings and bracelets, hang hard silvery grapes from them like exotic stones. We'd roll play cigarettes from paper, talk and gesture like women at cocktail parties in the movies, holding imaginary glasses in our hands, tapping our ashes with a flourish. We'd play house, take parts, divide things up - you be the mother Mary, you be the bad daughter, Helen, you be the good one. I'll be the teacher telling your mother. We crossed our legs, put our hands on our hips, got the gestures down, and if we argued about which part we got and the game broke up we'd walk home clopping along in our mother's high heels, dragging our long skirts, our noses in the air, thinking that if we couldn't have the part we wanted, we didn't have to play. published by Earth’s Daughters SHOO DOOBE DOOBE DOO Chuck Berry duckwalks across stage. We clap and scream. We're yelling "Maybelline" rocking up on the balls of our feet. Nobody sits. Down front they dance in the aisle pushing and tugging in double time. "Why cancha be true. . . ." About ten rows down the guy I like puts his arm around a dark haired girl with spit curls. I could have spit curls if I wanted to go to all that trouble every day. Chuck holds his guitar up over his head, shakes it. The beat disintegrates into ragged claps, cheers, hoots, yells, whistles. It's deafening. Frankie lowers his head to hers. Do you really use spit? he asks. She smiles with her teeth. The hell with it. The Five Satins run on stage and their high pealing line arcs over the rows - "In the still of the night" Shoo doobe doobe doo . . . all the anguish of never being loved glitters, salty, outside and inside at once, rhythm on both sides of the skin. If I shift to the right I can see them, all those damned curls. I won't love him anymore. If he wants spit curls let him have spit curls. I savor all the anguish of it. When the night stills in the dark parking lot behind the auditorium I hear those echoing notes deep inside under the bones of my hips. I catch sight of Frankie opening the door of his car for the spit head. I call it out and get in the car quick before they see who it is. appeared in the chapbook Glimmer Girls published by Mayapple Press VOLARE OH OH CANTARE OHOHOHOHOH In Casa D'Napoli that song came with rigatoni, ravioli, over and over until you knew the words by heart. You learned another language - linguini, lasagna, had your cheeks pinched al dente until you had to wear a girdle. Guido yelled, "Pick up!" cacciatore, scallapine, fettucine, and you'd better be quick or he'd chase your fingers with his knives. Baldo yelled, "Get da drinks.! "Pronto, pronto." He'd roll his eyes, hit the side of his head, "Manage. Manage." Stupido. Bellissimo. A caress or a curse - so close sometimes you weren't sure. After the tables emptied you cleared dishes took off cloths stained with chianti, borolo, Stuffed the dollar bills deep in your apron pockets, set up for breakfast. If it was a good night Mr. Vincenzo would stand us a drink. I'd carry tumblers of soave back to Guido humming among his pots. He'd kiss his fingers at me. The kitchen ladies take their glasses off the tray laughing about customers who ordered marinara. Didn't they know only poor people ate that? “'Medicans. . . .” We'd laugh and tell stories about how much we got or who stiffed us until the vino was gone and we'd fly home singing "nel blu dipinto di blu." Originally appeared in the Journal of New Jersey Poets DADDY NEVER DROVE BY MAPS Daddy learned to drive in France during the first war and didn't trust sign posts because the enemy switched them to confuse the troops. If we to be somewhere, we'd get up early and head in the general direction until the land changed. Then we'd stop some likely looking stranger and yell, "Do you know how to get to wherever from here?" The stranger'd be a man because women didn't know how to get anywhere then; he'd tell us something, offering rights and lefts and landmarks which we'd follow until we forgot, and then we'd stop and ask again. We'd never turn back. We'd angle down or cut across veering at the whims of strangers who wore hats because Daddy said, men who wore hats knew their way around. That's how we met the owner of Tom's ` Turkey Ranch out past Ansonia. He told us they were so damn dumb they'd drown in the rain. Been bred for breast too long, he said. They never changed the name at Twin Pines even though one pine got lightning struck. The bartender cured snake skins stretched over the mirror behind the bar. "Hell, No," he'd say, "they ain't slimy. Smooth, but sneaky, like a woman when she's after ya." After Daddy died I'd dream I was driving along a strange road and I'd stop to ask the way from a tall man in a black hat. He'd get in the back and yell right, left, whatever he wanted. Daddy said only boring people always know where they're going but if you never do you dream of snakes, flightless birds, tall men who wear black hats and beat their wives. Originally appeared in the Journal of New Jersey Poets
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