Cotton
- Cotton
- east st. louis toodle-o - out of the swamp, out of the fields, on the hot dusty roads, stumbling towards the train headed uptown. them wiseguys got steady work, tuxedos, tails, shiny shoes, swinging stomps and vamps out of vaudeville,
the prettiest high yallow chorus girls tempt the tans in gowns and risque threads, exotic aura of far away places, the wiseguys don’t like the kid at first, they can’t fight off his charm, must be that “jungle” noise,
the gangsters wanted king joe, joe didn’t have this kid’s luck (or irving mills), that famous folk sound got on a fancy suit now, with nightly radio visits the whole nation waits for, prohibition is the decree, only tans can get tanked up here, the boy who already captured new england soon will own harlem,
the world can hardly wait . . .
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.
