Clarinets

Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women.
TONI MORISSON, Jazz

It’s the inevitable namelessness, all that
drum-accompanied yet unlabeled wrestling
on the handmade bed like somersaults in a clown suit:
brown, gold, brown, golden brown, two
sides of a dream, flip hits from the post-war nineties.
You walk me to Lenox like a child–this old street,
our feet making the sidewalk shine–
past men without ladies on one-nineteen
who touch us as we walk by, bottles in their hands,
questions old as cities in their other hands,
glint of what used to be desire in their half-closed eyes.
They name us: Darlin’, Sugar,
and we play to their reminiscences
in eighth notes ascending to lanky rhythms of hip
and head slanted and feet that slap concrete.
They’re so drunk, we say, they don’t even know
we’re in love.