Imaginarium 3: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing by Sandra Kasturi (Ed) & Hellen Marshall (Ed)

Author:Sandra Kasturi (Ed) & Hellen Marshall (Ed) [Kasturi, Sandra & Marshall, Hellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Anthology
ISBN: 9781771482004
Publisher: ChiZine Publications
Published: 2015-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

JAZZMAN/PUPPET

Joan Crate

The wooden box holds a jazz-man puppet.

Felt lips on a papier-mâché head

fold around the mouthpiece of a plastic sax.

Wrists leak polyester stuffing and wire fingers

coax out black liquorice notes—

I saw you standing alone.

A woman looks out the window

at another time, watches with whisky vision

brake lights bleeding on wet asphalt

as she makes a stop in the past,

Gentle in my Mind.

She remembers the jazzman like it was yesterday

or 30 years ago—an ’80s disco, glitter, ganja,

his sax leaping over the keyboard

to shoot golden notes in her eyes

You are my shining star.

A guitar calls the tune and the jazzman answers

with a refrain that pours a Manhattan in a crystal glass

on a 16th floor balcony overlooking the city.

A breast nudges his arm, fireflies buzz his lips

falling

through time

on mine.

He studies the woman by the window,

wants to call her name but his mouth makes music

not words—

silver scales and constellations

shimmering through a puppet’s invented mind,

his mouth seared by hot licks and a glue gun,

and Smoke gets in my eyes.

I watch him play, in love and lost

in a world of pitch and riff, a young woman

in an old body taken aback by a paper and wire man—

a stage prop captured in a brain shot through

with secret passages and trap doors, how

I remember you.

The gold front tooth of another sunrise

fills dancers with early-morning ache.

It’s late, very late.

Musicians put down their instruments.

Lovers and players slink out the door.

Bye, bye love.

Jazzman packs up his sax and waves later, y’all.

On his way home, he’ll think of me

lingering in a brass alley of dropped chords.

He’ll open his mouth to speak, but there’s only

echoes, only what once was and now isn’t,

only upstairs to that charcoal sketch of a room

with bills littering the table, flies on the sill,

longing and a light bulb burnt out,

only the blues.

Daylight pushes

her old refrain through the pane,

cuts him in ribbons. Tears drip to my jaw.

Cry Me a River.

Jazz man closes his painted lids

and drifts down a memory—

nothing but music, nothing

but an instrument, the idea of sound,

a puppet animated and shoved in a wooden box—

that long-ago room

a reed of recollection

swing of loneliness,

loops of time.

Tell me Jazzman,

Do I ever cross your mind?

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