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An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to  Jerry Jazz Musician. This edition features several poems on the blues, a nod to West Coast Jazz, as well as reverence for the likes of Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, and Pat Metheny.

Thanks to the poets…and enjoy!

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photo by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress

Dave Tough; New York, 1946

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Jazz

The glass that stands on the table
is simply a glass no matter
what the fractious light decrees.
Words spoken letters sent.
It’s so old-fashioned.
The sun comes up Tuesday morning.
What does that have to do with me?
Have they hung these mobiles
to the ceiling out of some identification
with Alexander Calder?
The tile floor shit-spotted and sensual
as my grade school cafeteria.
There the boys grabbed themselves
in the cloakroom and the girls
wouldn’t have cared anyway.
All the walls I walk between
will outlast me. Notebooks of flowers
and foolishness. But isn’t that the way
jazz is supposed to be? Yes, I think so.

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by Kristofer Collins

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Island Interlude

island love
Caribbean rhythms!
it’s the jazz that changes you
from the inside out

exotic sunflowers
entrenched in a feeling
when you move your hips to ska
and reggae rhythms, you embody

all that is Afro-Caribbean
rum & cinnamon! sun-drenched &
percussive! what you hear is your
rising syncopated heartbeat

free jazz fused with
a calypso calibration!
a young girl listens and sways
she lifts her face to the skies

and she wonders:

when will the sun turn my skin to
sugar cane / yams / & honey
I want to spread my love like butter &
rise / rise / rise

like a saltwater chant

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by Connie Johnson

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Double Hill Crescendo

Señorita slides up the staircase,
………………one hand on the banister —
………………………………she looks below:

………………………………the record player, rich with Thelonious
………………dusts itself off in the living room corner
as Señorita ascends

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by Josie Rozell

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Tripping Over Counterpoint

there are times when
I stumble on the piano staircase
scaling Gloria’s Steps

not because I’m
caught short by Bill’s
curled over keyboard grace

it’s usually due to young
Scott LeFaro’s brisk pizzicato
burning up the bass strings

yet I’ve never felt awkward
hearing that robust blaze
snap from creation

after the smoke clears
Jade Visions form while
my ankles rest eyes closed

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by Terrance Underwood

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A Face Without a Name—Bill Evans

Autumn’s leaf notes dance
a waltz reckoning with wind,
and sun streaks across her face like
high-hatting five o’clock shadows
as weary workers surrender to blues.

She moves thru energetic silhouettes—
her pirouettes await the entranced coming
of cars, rain drops, street lights turning on.

The leaves move brisk beneath her feet,
as her legs shake the sidewalk sleet.
And you want to go with her;
And you want to follow in her mood—

So perfectly enthused, delighted
to being alive, in a city, on a street;
falling snow, rivulets of rain, every
thing meshing into soft-swift beats.

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by DH Jenkins

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One Autumn Afternoon

Autumn is melancholy.
Sniffling chilled air
on afternoon walks,
kicking up leaves
until dusk, searching for that jazz sound;
bebop arguments of being
the musician’s music.
Hot under the collar,
cool jargon in a noble aspect
of spiritual exchanges.

The pee-ana-man’s nimble digits
accompanying his shouts of boogie-woogie;
giggly replies from service girls
collecting more propositions than tips.

Ooo-bop-sha-bam!
the drummer proclaims, hip chants
from deep drawls of toms;
his brushes pushing virgin skin,
bristles slap like a whip snapped.
Stomp kick
bodies thrown!

Now stop! Breeeeathe….
Let play subtle the bass;
stern yet respective,
responsive when called
upon, never intruding but
always an invited advocate.

Faces and names having
tumbled into libations makes
everything less neat. All drinks off
tables at 2 a.m!  Last call
for an invitation or rendezvous.
A currency of dope
and turned tricks of
one local call girl:

A story behind every tattoo,
secrets safely in her quim.

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by Rob Yedinak

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Mingus and Simone

visionary voices redefining
American cultural and social
landscape they married anguish
to joy and possibility into a previously
monochrome cultural and political landscape
they refused to surrender to the cruel
the banal the obvious the mundane
their voices were not strident
they were revelatory prophetic

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by Michael L. Newell

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Sax Revolution
………….for Abami Eda

“My music is a weapon. I use satire to make oppression ridiculous.”
—Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti

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I Shrine’s Genesis

Lagos, 1977: Blood crusted your saxophone’s keys
like old honey. Aníkúlápó!¹ Death in your pouch—
you blew colonial scales from its brass throat.
Why Black Man Dey Suffer? First hymn
at the Afrika Shrine’s altar. Water no get enemy,
but fire had your name.

……………[Trumpet Solo: a spiral of Lagos rain dissolving into radio static]

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II Kalakuta’s Satire

Twenty-seven queens danced in the dictator’s smoke,
hips spelling *YABI!² in Yoruba script.
“Zombie!”  you sang—soldiers’ boots turned to stone.
Expensive Shit³ :  mailed to generals’ desks:
“Dem go use your shit to put you for jail!”
Then they threw your mother from the window.
You answered with coffins:
Coffin for Head of State⁴

……………[Tony Allen’s drums: gunfire / djembe under rubble]

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III The Unbroken Note

Abami Eda!⁵ Strange One—Grammys bow
to your ghost, but you refused their stage.
Even now, when tyrants cough into their mics,
we hear it: the unbroken note
you left hanging in the Shrine’s ash—
Àṣẹ.⁶ A breath the bars could never cage.

……………[Fela’s sax: a war cry swallowed by silence]

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Notes :
1. Aníkúlápó: “He who carries death in his pouch” (Fela’s name after surviving a 1977 army assault).
2. YABI! Yoruba slang meaning “to ridicule” or “strike with words.”
3. Expensive Shit:  Title track of Fela’s 1975 album mocking police who planted drugs on him.
4. Coffin for Head of State:  Title track of Fela’s 1981 album released in protest as a tribute to his mother after the raid on Fela’s Kalakuta Republic compound.
……..77-year-old Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was thrown from a second-floor window by soldiers. She sustained severe injuries — fractures and internal trauma — and never fully recovered.
……..Tragically, she died a year later. Fela, his wives, band members, and supporters marched her coffin to the gates of Dodan Barracks, the seat of Nigeria’s military power, and laid her down.
……..Her body the conscience of a nation, her silence the loudest cry.
5. Abami Eda:  “Strange one” (Fela’s Yoruba praise name)
6. Àṣẹ:  Yoruba concept of divine power to speak things into being.

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by Saira Viola

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All the Jazz Sax Poets and Painters

i don’t listen to music – i only hear it anymore
days when jazz played i saw paint
and when absorbing paintings i heard jazz
there’s truth in the convolution
missing the excitement of finding a new room
in a pyramid
a new sound in vibraphone
an undiscovered pigment hiding
in the vault
or an old tape recorder
holding film under the floorboards in New
York

There was a time my fingers could trace the pearls
tickle the tan lines
a time when my lungs could play across
Europe
or become lost in L.A
i adored your work in Amsterdam
and saw it again on tour in
Toronto

You challenged me in Rome
and i played your same notes backwards
being more embarrassed than you
with my own brush strokes
while you carried on and partied in
Zorthian

After a while
I realized you kept changing sound
more because you couldn’t do what you did in the day
but i couldn’t be like that
so i sit and hear
but i don’t listen

i love you still
but i’m a wise old owl
while you still dance on the fence line
a crazy backyard
midnight yard
bird

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* poem inspired by this article about Sonny Rollins.
* Finding a new room in a pyramid: Rollins quote after the discovery
of a lost Coltrane album in 2018
* I played some of your notes backwards: After a show with Coltrane –
Rollins admonished himself for being too competitive on stage with
Coltrane by taking what Coltrane played and repeating it backwards
* Zorthian: an artist retreat/ranch where Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker once
played to a room full of partygoers
* I realized you kept changing your sound: Rollins believed that Miles
Davis kept changing his sounds over the years due to health issues.
Davis couldn’t do what he could earlier in his career but he adapted
and kept evolving. Rollins instead went into retirement due to health
issues

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by Martin Durkin

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Juke Joint
…………………after Al Hirschfeld’s  Slow Blues

After days of
cotton-picking

farmhands
shake loose
weariness

in slow blues

……..weariness
…… .shakes loose
……..farmhands

……..hugging &
……..rocking

……..in slow blues

farmhands
shake loose
weariness

dragging &
swinging

in slow blues

……..to improvise
……..a body language

……..bumping &
……..grinding
……..weariness

……..in slow blues

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by Jianqing Zheng

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Playing the Blues

Playing the blues
Is turning blue water into blue sky
From sinking down in the depths
To soaring above it all
Looking upon yourself
As you look up to yourself

Playing the blues
Is turning the inside out
From the bottom of your heart
To wearing it on your sleeve
Talking down to your level
Stimulating you to speak up!

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by Anthony Ward

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Esther

I always thought you looked a little bit
Like Esther Phillips / blues-defined
The differing of introspection

The innuendo of your voice
Implying things / your blues risqué
Lyrics autobiographical

A Galveston blend
Of White Port Wine
And lemon juice
In a slinky dress
The color of
Bordeaux

Transported!

In a note for note Charlie Parker
Reimaging / were you born
To sing the blues?

Alcohol and heroin
All the way down to hell
And back again

Must I break protocol
To remind you that home
Is where the hatred is?

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by Connie Johnson

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Notes to Playlist  Amy Winehouse

Listening to your girlfriend again?

—my family

She can go scat for scat with Diane Reeves.
Split the difference between Ettas Jones

and James. Go big like Nancy Wilson. Hit
the brakes like Nina Simone, and reset

to the detached sincerity of Billie
Holiday mixing the Tin Pan Alley

songs of her day into works of alchemy
as when Winehouse, from her surplus talent,

flirts with the James Bond franchise—as I hear
it—channeling Shirley Bassey’s vampy

“Gooold Fin—ger” when attraction and power
spell danger in the story she’s weaving,

stretching words like muted trumpet moans. Taking license
and killing it. Nobody does it better.

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by Chuck Sweetman

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Cool on the Coast

This night there is an Ocean ‘sitting in’ –
Somewhat off- tempo and Pacifically –
So Shelley Manne incorporates the Ocean
Urging it explore its pure ‘wild’ sound
In soft percussive brushes of white sand

His sympathetic cymbal rings
‘Eight Bells’ then Chet ascends
A summer thermal cylinder of air
Equally compressed of warm and cool

Bob Cooper drapes the combo
In ‘Li-Lo’ mellow pillows from his horn
In case someone should fall
Although this Basie riff (or reef) assures –
‘It’s Sand Man’

The Lighthouse at Hermosa is not tall
It does not tower auspiciously
Entry is by open door that lies aslant the street
An optimistic cube of un-square ice
A California facet to a sudden Modern World

Who will spread its serendipitous ‘Jam’?
‘Contemporary’ – the righteous name
Printed boldly onto ten-inch wax –
Centre label tinted sunshine yellow

Clinton Eastwood quite oblique
Health-kick Oakland actor
He of economical interaction
Scores another walk-on role –
A Carson City Stage horse-opera
Developing his ‘cowboy’ Kurosawa
Samurai hip to introspective sounds –
So he follows Niehaus club to club
In counterpoint continuum of Octet ballad-magic

From the mountain to the shore
Barefoot on skis or sandals
Seated at pews with jugs of beer
Sunday Afternoons live at The Lighthouse
Form collective Sermonette –
Howard Rumsey’s All Stars
Casually conjoined to hold their joyous Summit

Now survey the Zen horizon
Clicking William Claxton contemplates –
Shelley’s brushes now a breeze recall
Many ‘gone’ musicians ‘on the night-shift’

Time is a wave in which we are made
Time which plays with us
So by music we may play with Time
Mentoring the Ocean in a music that consoles
Until we are the Ocean

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by Bernard Saint

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Lester in the Spring

Sporting no hat
Nor long coat
No need on this
Young Spring
Lester fluid afternoon
Rounding smooth
Some coarse edges of Time

Blend relaxed an All of Me cocktail
Swizzled with a Wilson
Dash of Teddy
……………..For a highball Billie
………………………..Still a fine mellow tonic
Public eccentricities may have prevailed
Though interiors are differentiated
Remaining tone tempered note by note

Horn cradled angles displayed
This inimitable President’s truth which
Will never close or even lower the bar
Ahh! Such an honorable breath

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by Terrance Underwood

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The Boss Brass

not a cutting-edge ensemble
like Thad’s or Toshiko’s
just a straight-up ballsy big-band
with swing encoded in its DNA
a signature sound as recognizable
as Ellington’s or Herman’s or Basie’s
led by Rob McConnell
whose rollicking valve-trombone solos
set the tone for crisp execution
of charts ranging from “A Train” to Zawinul
exploring the many permutations
of scrappy saxes, punchy brass,
silky flutes and flugels
cradled in a rhythm groove
as bankable as the solo turns
that emanate from all corners of the band

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by Tim Maloney

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Miles per gallon
…..for Tony Policano, author of “Before the Birth of Cool” poetry book

stop lights no longer make
this traveler
impatient

Miles Davis CDs
one with Kenny Garrett
blowin’ some healing alto sax

the road goes
smoother groove,
fusion rhythms
“Human Nature”

i could swear
better Miles per gallon
than sitting on the couch

In A Silent [Zen] Way
Miles said he knew
which notes not to play

a lesson in mind manners
what thoughts not to engage,
what words not to say
before
you open your mouth

let the unessentials float by
like Buddhist meditation clouds,
calmly focus heart and spirit wind
with Kind of Blue sky

and even if it rains
the wipers keeping time
to Birth of the Cool jazz

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by Mankh

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Honey/Dew

Morning stamps out a song that sways the way I play the little tinny things that I’m used to hearing every day.  Papa, I got the blues stuck in the throat and I cough up soul as sweet as youth and what did you say come over and get to swinging?

Well, OK. OK. Ok. OK.

Tap it out. Tap it baby. Hug my waist my only once. There you go. Spin me, don’t look down there, not yet. Okay now we parting but you still in front, step one two step two you so sweet baby so sweet ima call you honey dew.

Sweet as morning sugar splayed on flowertops. That’s what you got. Ha! My baby, with that style and shock, you sweet as honey, come on dip me, you got that saving ride this morning, my sweet sweet sweet as morning sugar, honey dew.

by Jennifer Maritza McCauley

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Jazzing My Life

My cousin Joyce
starts taking me to jazz
when I’m in my mid-thirties –
mid-jobs, mid-careers.
And the quality of improv
greatly appeals to me.
Very like my life.
As I’m experiencing it.
Maybe everyone’s life.
Or maybe it’s working in advertising
The sexism so ugly,
so discordant,
I need a way out.

What I hear in the music is
freedom and joy
The keyboard carrying the melody
The horn taking off and flying

But I’m not feeling it.
I wonder how to get that back.
It will take two years to figure it out
To transition to direct advertising.
It will take night school. Help with child care.
A new portfolio of work.

Then, I’m doing it
Trading tv for bus posters
Magazines for newspaper ads
Making it up every day
Improvising
The jazz and the joy
Somehow back in my life.

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by Christine O’Hanlon

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Place

God, touch my heart
Go into the places where
Only jazz goes, where the
Devil will never know, speak
To me in a way even jazz can’t
Speak to my heart, with song
Where even women come short
Where jazz leaves only an echo
Open my eyes, and show me dawn
Show me love that words promise
But fail to deliver, God, touch my heart
As a lover would, as if she never
Could, and fill me with a heart of
Peace…

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by Erren Geraud Kelly

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Listening to Metheny and Haden

the sorrow in Spiritual is so deep
……………..the grief so intense
…………………………….a listener plays the tune

replays then does the same again and again
……………..one imagines oneself at sea
…………………………….past Tennyson’s bar in open water

hunting that star which might guide one home
……………..while one recalls a life damaged
…………………………….by absurd choices lack of vision

alone in the boat
……………..one shouts a confession no response
…………………………….but the chorale of wind and waves

such beauty in the music
……………..that tears are an inadequate response
…………………………….only the most profound grief will do

at last the listener
……………..ceases his immersion in the music
…………………………….closes his eyes and dreams of vast bodies of water

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by Michael L. Newell

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Listen to the 1995 recording of Carol Sloane singing the Josef Myrow/Kim Gannon composition “Autumn Nocturne” (with Phil Woods).  [Universal Music Group]

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Kristofer Collins is the Books Editor for Pittsburgh Magazine. He is also co-curator of the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series. His latest poetry collection, Roundabout Trace, was published in 2022 by Kung Fu Treachery Press. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his wife and two children.

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Martin Durkin is a writer currently living in Plymouth MA. To date he has published three books of poetry, and has been included in dozens of anthologies. In 2025 his work will be found in Massachusetts Bards, Otherwise Engaged, and an upcoming anthology entitled, I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis, by Roseway Publishing. Durkin has had several pieces of his work turned into videos, and art prints for various universities and colleges have been part of a video series entitled, SPEAK IT!, where he delivered poetry about being a military spouse.

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DH Jenkins’ poems have appeared in  Jerry Jazz Musician,  Kelp Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review. His new book of poetry, Patterns on the Wall, is available on Amazon.com. He lives in New Zealand.

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Connie Johnson has multiple Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry. A California-based writer, she has authored Everything is Distant Now (Blue Horse Press) and I Have Almost Everything (Boats Against the Current). In a Place of Dreams, her digital chapbook (containing audio readings/personal narrative), was published by Jerry Jazz Musician. Click here to view it.  A more recent collection, Still Wild, can be viewed by clicking here.

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Erren Kelly is a three-time Pushcart nominated poet from Boston whose work has appeared in 300 publications (print and online), including Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine, Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, and Poetry Salzburg.

Click here to read “Under Quarantine” — COVID-era poetry of Erren Kelly, published by Jerry Jazz Musician

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Tim Maloney is a musician, author, and retired arts administrator living in the Hudson Valley, whose poetry has been published in Bare Root Review, Fortunate Traveller, Ilya’s Honey, Leaflets, Muskeg Review, Poetry On and Off the Wall, Red River Review, Silver Birch Press, Syncopation Literary Journal, and The Talking Stick.

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Mankh  (Walter E. Harris III)  writes, publishes, gardens, travels a holistic mystic Kaballah-rooted pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island.  To find out more about his writings, publishings, podcasts, presentations, click here.

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Dr. Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of Scar On/Scar Off, When Trying to Return Home, Kinds of Grace and Neon Steel (2/26). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio and CantoMundo and her work has been a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Best Fiction Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and a Must-Read by Elle, Latinx in Publishing, Ms. Magazine and Southern Review of Books. She has been published recently in Boston Review, Columbia Journal, Vassar Review, Acentos Review, Zone 3, Obsidian and The BreakBeat Poets: Latinext (HayMarket Press). She is fiction editor at Pleiades and an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

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Michael L. Newell lives on the Atlantic Coast of Florida. His most recent book of poems is Passage of a Heart. Click here to read “What is this Path” – a collection of poems published on Jerry Jazz Musician

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Christine Baldino O’Hanlon wrote advertising – tv, print, online – for credit cards and cookie mixes. Her first poetry collection, The Bronx Years (Finishing Line Press)  recalls her rebellion growing up in an Italian-American family in the Bronx, NY.  Her poems appear in Her Words, the Paterson Literary Review, and other places.

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Josie Rozell writes to the long-notes of Nina & Billie and salts the stanzas with a little Davis. She is the author of two collections of poetry and hand-cut collage: Articulated Soul  (2021)  and  Deep Breath  (2023).  More of her work can be found at www.josierozell.wordpress.com. She lives and creates by way of Berlin.

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Bernard Saint is a U.K. poet who has published in U.K. and United States literary magazines since the 1960’s. He is a regular contributor to International Times. His most recent book is ROMA, published by Smokestack Books. He worked as a therapist and supervisor in the U.K. National Health Service in psychiatry and in addiction recovery.

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Chuck Sweetman is a senior editor for december magazine. His essays, stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in such places as Verse Daily, Brilliant Corners, River Styx, Poet Lore, Black Warrior Review,  Jerry Jazz Musician,  and Notre Dame Review. In addition to chapbooks, he is the author of a book of poems, Enterprise, Inc. (Dream Horse Press).

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Terrance Underwood is a retired Gas Turbine Package Engineer whose career offered opportunities to work all over the world. A devoted jazz enthusiast, his first memory operating a mechanical devise was a 4-speed spindle drop record changer for his father’s collection of 78s.

Click here to read Proceeding From Behind: A collection of poems grounded in the rhythmic, relating to the remarkable, by Terrance Underwood

Click here to read his collection of poems “With Ease in Mind”

 

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Saira Viola : Pushcart Nominated wordsmith of lyrical noir and punk lit.

Poetry : Don’t Shoot The Messenger, Flowers of War,  (anti war) Fast Food and Gin on the Lawn)  Novels:  Crack Apple & Pop,  Jukebox , and short stories (Red Honey)  Words found on the page the protest line and the middle of the fight.

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Anthony Ward chooses to write because he has no choice. He writes to get rid of himself and lay his thoughts to rest. He derives most of his inspiration from listening to classical music and jazz since it is often the mood which inspires him. He has recently been published in  Jerry Jazz Musician,  Synchronized Chaos, Literary Yard, Mad Swirl, Shot Glass Journal and Ariel Chart.

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Rob Yedinak’s previous publishing credits of over 20 years ago include Hook and Ladder, Lucid Moon and Medicinal Purposes. He has only recently started writing again because of certain inspirations, but against his better judgement. He writes vignettes fraught with neurosis, perversion, noir, contrast, relief and an occasional inside joke only the author would laugh at.

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Jianqing Zheng is the author of The Dog Years of Reeducation (Madville Publishing, 2023)  and  A Way of Looking  (Silverfish Review Press, 2021).  He teaches at a historically black institution in the Mississippi Delta.

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Click for:

Previous editions  of “21 poems on the 21st”

The Sunday Poem

More poetry on Jerry Jazz Musician

“My Vertical Landscape,” Felicia A. Rivers’ winning story in the 69th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest

More short fiction on Jerry Jazz Musician

Information about how to submit your poetry or short fiction

Subscribe to the (free) Jerry Jazz Musician quarterly newsletter

Helping to support the ongoing publication of Jerry Jazz Musician, and to keep it commercial-free (thank you!)

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Jerry Jazz Musician…human produced since 1999

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