TATTOO

featuring Dexter Gordon

by Michael Harper

Though a simple rose under your skin
I look up the bugle ritual of recall

for sailors to regroup — soldiers at parade rest
and your sister who could not read as a child

needing you for sustenance — now you want it removed
Copenhagen (for me) is Tivoli played by Dexter Gordon

His love for that city —broad and low in balladry
for making the sound of recall a lullaby

with his name on it — he would love to see your tattoo
his magic at composition a call to Basie/Ellington

Hamp and two full days of practice at seventeen
with the makers of bebop — just off the train from LA

the son of a doctor whose doctoring gave such a smile
in the lower registers he was Mr. “Blue Note” (tenor)

he would venture his signature on conventions ROSE
and turn courtly in the madrigal — play you a hymn

and take you to his church (which was always the road)
so you know why you came from the north — a town

just out of sight from Copenhagen — and in this poem
provided your sister that special speech of signals

so the faerytale of being pricked into song
just under the skin was the song of a tent show

the tattooist fully sober and without shaky hands
and just beneath the surface of your blood

Cezanne’s Polynesian sorcerer — so genial in profile
that eating your salad is a school of painting

primal in the garden of the artist’s magic circle
where every gesture is the canon of tattoo

*

John Forasté © Brown University

About Michael Harper

     Michael Harper is one of America’s most celebrated poets, having received honors and appointments from artistic organizations and academic institutions across the country, ranging from National Book Award to a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is much sought after for poetic readings, guest lectureships, and visiting professorships, and served as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island from 1988 to 1993, and as Kapstein Professor of English at Brown University.

     His poetry is highly influenced by the music he loves: jazz and blues sound through the lines and often appear as inspiration, metaphor or rhythm in individual poems. His poetry is filled with references to his past; history, experience, and family are strong inspirations which reverberate throughout his work. His ancestry, to which he refers frequently, is filled with fascinating and inspirational individuals. Paraphrasing Ralph Ellison, Harper once said: “Relatives are people that you are born into, and have no choice about them. Ancestors are people you choose.” His ancestors live on and their voices can still be heard in the lines of his verse.

– From Brown University Library