Jazz in a Small Town
So much depends on a thick southern air fused
with honeysuckle, lilac; a little carcass and cowshit adds.
One scent riffs of the next. So much of what I see
already has words, images and judgment attached:
green to life, white and pure, blue skies and calm.
But smell a rotting dog, hip fractured by car wheels
beneath a man on his cell phone, the poor dog
tumbled into a weedy ditch. Soon the odor begins
to meld with fresh cut hay and you have two notes
baked beneath a summer sun, making discordant sound
defying ideas of good and bad. The notes wrap
their legs around each other’s torso in a moment
of honesty. He, tempted to describe what he sees,
opens his mouth, emits a blast of air; She, knowing
it’s right, says Shh, places her finger over his lips.
***
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