“Covid Covered?” — a poem by Jim Mello

September 10th, 2020

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Covid Covered? 

There it was
On the waterfront bench
Tempting me
In this Summer of
Covid inspired fears

A little flower framed heart
With the message

Free! Enjoy!
Smile

On the hard cover
Warmed by the intensifying
Morning heat

“One Hundred Years of The Nation” 1965

With a list of authors
My college lit teachers would swoon over:

Sinclair Lewis, Andre Malraux, Thomas Mann
Catherine Anne Porter, Reinhold Neibuhr, Bertolt Brecht

Unexpectedly contemporary essays

and a small poetry
section at the end with

Yeats, Stevens, Auden, Frost, Jeffers

That closed the deal
On the musty tome
Coming home
In this season of closed bookstores
And antisepticized libraries

As the Angel Muses smiled

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photo by Alice Mello

 

Jim Mello is a counselor and clinical supervisor in the substance use disorder field. He’s also a part time clergy person, and has taught in the University of Maine system as an adjunct professor. Besides People, .his passion is music and he.became a poet by default. He has three books published, two by Moon Pie Press, and one self-published. 

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Listen to Herbie Hancock play “Survival of the Fittest,” from his 1965 album Maiden Voyage, with Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), George Coleman (saxophone), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums)

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In This Issue

"Nina" by Marsha Hammel
A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Winter, 2024 Edition...One-third of the Winter, 2024 collection of jazz poetry is made up of poets who have only come to my attention since the publication of the Summer, 2023 collection. What this says about jazz music and jazz poetry – and this community – is that the connection between the two art forms is inspirational and enduring, and that poets are finding a place for their voice within the pages of this website. (Featuring the art of Marsha Hammel)

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Proceeding From Behind: A collection of poems grounded in the rhythmic, relating to the remarkable, by Terrance Underwood...A relaxed, familiar comfort emerges from the poet Terrance Underwood’s language of intellectual acuity, wit, and space – a feeling similar to one gets while listening to Monk, or Jamal, or Miles. I have long wanted to share his gifts as a poet on an expanded platform, and this 33-poem collection – woven among his audio readings, music he considers significant to his story, and brief personal comments – fulfills my desire to do so.

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painting (cropped) by Berthold Faust/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED/Wikimedia Commons
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