Safe word and: Stranger fruit
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safe word
::: the poet meets the band
I am the lonely vixen haunting jazzclubs, carving moons into the soft woodof the bar with nervous fingernails. Tension
is solvent and whatever cocktail’s on specialwill soften the day’s angst, splintinglower vertebrae. Imperceptible sway
balanced on black barstools, scribbling in the netof light cast by shallow candles, and afteronly a few cherrybottomed glasses, I am
ready to stop pretending I’m not pliant. There’s no dangerin folding my secrets into bar napkins, into the flapping magicmusic of saxophones, no danger in the dark tower of sound
winding up from the front-man’s mouth. No onehas to know there’s more than unwritten versesaching beneath my dress, snaking through my palms
to be heard. There’s no danger in applause,in mumbling invitations drownedout by the heaving impetus of drums.
stranger fruit
::: the poet bargains with the band
There are no apologies in drums.The square-toothed tenor goes onlying through his song, the basschisels a little wound on the hipof stage air, and yes there is a trumpetwhose open mouth is frozen in brassscreams. The inexorable percussionis not sorry for the danger they play.
The door behind the stage opens to the alley.A woman there would have screamed.The walls of this joint puckerlike busted cheeks. The tick tick of drumsoffers no apology, no recompense for torn hose, for mufflingthe scream she might have hatchedif it weren’t all so pointless. She hums alongwith the blood of the trumpet instead.
The percussion isn’t sorry, even when its rattlequakes through alley bruises. The band just coverssummertime over and over, thrusting into medallionsof flesh peering through torn hose, dark melodiesclotting on the razor of her smile. [End Page 145]
If she happens to addle the padlock rustingagainst gurgles gagged in dumpster shadows, ifshe trips on to the stage to ask the band for help,losing her balance in the thicket of cymbals, if.
Nothing. She’ll just twistsilently in branches of sound,quizzical bruised fruit no onedare speak. [End Page 146]
Kristiana Colón is a poet, playwright, actor, and educator living and working in Chicago. She has served as an adjunct English and humanities professor at Chicago State University, Malcolm X College, and Tribeca Flashpoint Academy. Colón has also performed on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. The poems “safe word” and “stranger fruit,” appearing herein, will also be published in her forthcoming promised instruments (Northwestern UP).
