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Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 12-month 2025 calendar of jazz poetry winds through the year with her poetic grace while inviting us to wander through music by the likes of Charlie Parker, Hoagy Carmichael, Frank Sinatra, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sarah Vaughan,  Melody Gardot and Nina Simone. She welcomes August with a solemn poem punctuated by the bass of Stefan Redtenbacher.

 

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August, 2025

“August Blues”

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photo via Picryl

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August Blues

The air is humid from Redtenbacher’s bass. I ignore one layer of sweat upon my skin becoming salt crystals for mosquitoes at mid-day. An invisible cobweb through the woods off the trail veils my face. I pull away at the mesh. I’m an edible black bride. My sweetheart tells me he’s dying when his heart pounds at night, soothed by the upright bass. I suspect his mind is full of imaginary things and the regrets of not having taken risks. The heart surgeon found nothing wrong. It’s a mystery—a beautiful white horse fidgeting next to me in bed. I stroke his silky mane. On my walk, I look up to a sky with grey clouds clustered, whispering August rain. It has poured every day and I walk quietly in it. My life depends now on orange zinnias planted in a teal ceramic pot, catching my sight on someone’s porch. My heart pounds like my sweetheart full of imaginary things. If I can be silent enough, I can recognize them as shadows, then roam my gaze on those little caves in fallen birch becoming wells, collecting water in August.

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Listen to Jerrice J. Baptiste read her poem

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Listen to the 2020 recording of Redtenbacher’s Funkestra perform “August Blues” [Virgin Music Group]

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Click to view any of the poems Jerrice wrote for each month.  

Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr/May/Jun/Jul/Aug/Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec/Intro

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Jerrice  J. Baptiste  is a poet and author of nine books, Her most recent poetry book  Coral in The Diaspora  is published by Abode Press (August 2024). She’s been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize (2024 & 2025), and Best of the Net in 2022.   Jerrice‘s poems and collaborative songwriting are featured on the Grammy nominated album Many Hands Family Music for Haiti.

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Click for:

The Sunday Poem

More poetry on Jerry Jazz Musician

“Saharan Blues on the Seine,” Aishatu Ado’s winning story in the 68th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest

More short fiction on Jerry Jazz Musician

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