From the book:
BLUES FOR CLIFFORD BROWN
It's 1954, as in the 1950s, she's leaning at the bar,
like a willow tree at midnight, like a hobo about to
explode, I'm in no man's land, so good it's scary, so
good she could hold me up to the light and see right
through me to Los Angeles the jazz blows black and
white, blows thick and I don't care -- she sings from
a bottle, she spills like the blues for Clifford Brown,
a thousand more like her but that's outside, and she's
in here getting trippy with the lipstick, staring at herself
in the blue blue lights of Avenue A, I cannot and will not
try to explain this thing to you or to myself, embraceable
untraceable, look what she's done to my hair my shoes,
yes 1000 of her outside on the avenue, a river runs through
each and every one and she is the only one that has ever
been real, and I am a boy named Mary, I am a girl named
Jake, I know it's crazy but whatever it takes to get her away
from here, whatever it takes all right I will, my loss her gain
it's all in the game, truth or consequences, sweet pain and
indecision, hungry for it not hungry for it, all the same, just
her being her identical self tonight, for a boy like me for a
girl like me -- it's midnight at the bar, pouring from the bottle,
and she's my guy -- who could ask for anything more
George Wallace is editor of Poetrybay, co-editor of Great Weather for Media, author of 29 previous collections, since 2011 he has served as writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace in West Hills, LI NY. First poet laureate of Suffolk County and 2015-16 Laureate of the Connecticut-based International Beat Festival, he is adjunct professor of English at Pace University in Manhattan and Westchester Community College
Wallace is a fixture on the New York City poetry scene and travels internationally to lecture, conduct workshops and perform his work. In recent years he has appeared on stage with David Amram, Levon Helm, Thurston Moore and Donovan; at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, Woody Guthrie Festival, John Steinbeck Center, Pollock/Krasner House, Punahou School and Gordon Parks Museum; and internationally at the Ledbury Festival, Dylan Thomas Center, Robert Burns Center, Avignon Festival, Biblioteca Civica/Parma and About-art in Athens, Greece.
A SIMPLE BLUES WITH A FEW INTANGIBLES
is a hand-sewn paperbook with spine. $16.00
Release date August 15.
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