Washington, D.C.
- Washington, D.C. for duke ellington
the boy who painted signs was blessed from birth, played baseball piano and hung out all over the city where he was born, ward place washington, d.c. rent party regular down with the blues buddy bolden bunk johnson intrigued with this newfangled new orleans negro music called
“jasssss . . .”
composing soda fountain rags longing to know luckie the lion and louis brown getting all the basics from doc perry and henry grant jamming these beats in simulated juke joints with broken down eighty eights for entertainment, giving him enough guts to cut father james p [End Page 149] on “carolina shout,” learning some left hand incantations right hand rhythms stride style extempore with an orchestra looming in his mind the blessed boy is quickly declared royalty and the only signs he gonna paint now are those tunes he bangs out on broken down eighty eights in smoke filled pool halls long into the night . . .
Brian Gilmore is an attorney who lives and works in Washington, DC. Elvis Presley Is Alive and Well and Living in Harlem, his first volume of poems, was published by Third World Press (Chicago) in 1993. He has also published poems and essays in a number of anthologies and periodicals, including Soulfires, In Search of Color Everywhere, Obsidian II, and Nation.
