Coltrane on Soprano
His
eyes are
so closed
they’re op
en. From the
top of his he
ad, he sees the
music coming
at him eleven
notes at a time.
He must squee
ze them all thro
ugh this narrow
tongue flick of a
horn, this squeal
er, whiner, sopra
no, diva of a high
pitched saxophone.
Flurries of fingere
d-key-fingers indis
tinguishable from eac
h other, strike the honey
from the stone. O, blurry pain
and slurry sorrow suck the merci
ful marrow from this brass-gold bone.
Nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, twice for the National Book Award and three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of more than 50 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.
Driving in the Highlands
What catches the tongue in the throat like a loss of meaning?
What I speak of came into being
By means of brutal necessity.
What is not bartered or consigned.
Whose arc does not bend.
My subject is not the unsayable but the unsaid.
Now curse, now clearing.
Katharine Cortese lives in New Jersey and has published chapbooks with Dancing Girl Press and Typewriter City.
