Way Out West: Sonny Rollins, 1955
- Way Out West:Sonny Rollins, 1955
He holds his saxophone likean oasis and within it, a mirageof desert gold, pink oranges and pricklypear. Las Vegas reflectsitself up and down the fingerstops, coins of sunset, and whenhe hits the Desert Inn that club willswing, man, to his ever-livingbreath, his fingersflicking off those notes likechampagne bubbles that ticklethe nose of his audience, held rapt,swayin’ in their seats, in lovewith that sound, man, he can blowsweet jesus on that thing andonly the black pitch in his eyes andthe wooly arm of the Joshua treeremind you that, like Sammy Davis,he’ll be using the back doorto all that town’s glitter and God knows,they don’t let colored boys swim in the pools. [End Page 107]
based on the photograph by William Claxton
Gianna Russo is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Moonflower (Kitsune Books, 2011), winner of the Florida Book Award Bronze Medal, the Florida Publishers Association Silver Award, and an Eric Hofer First Horizons Honorable Mention. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has also had publications in Tampa Review, Ekphrasis, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Florida Humanities Council Forum, Karamu, The Bloomsbury Review, The Sun, Poet Lore, The MacGuffin, and Calyx, among others. She is also the founding editor of YellowJacket Press (www.yellowjacketpress.org) and Instructor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University.
