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Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 770-771



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from Vol. 21, No. 1 (Winter 1998)

Don Pullen At The Zanzibar Blue Jazz Café, 1994

Major L. Jackson


Half-past eight Don Pullen just arrived
from Yellow Springs. By his side
is the African-Brazilian Connection.
If it were any later, another space,
say "Up All Night Movie Hour"
on Channel 7, he might have been
a cartel leader snorting little mountains
of cocaine up his mutilated nostrils
from behind his bureau as he buries
a flurry of silver-headed bullets
into the chests of the good guys:
an armlock M-16 in his right hand,
a sawed-off double barrel shotgun
in his left, his dead blond
girlfriend oozing globules of blood
by the jacuzzi. Nothing, no one,
could be cooler balancing all
those stimulants. No one.
She said she couldn't trust me,
that her ladybugs were mysteriously
disappearing, that I no longer
sprinkle rose petals in her
bath, that some woman left a bouquet
of scented lingerie and a burning
candelabra on our doorstep, that she
was leaving, off to France, Paris--
the land of lovers. In this club
the dim track lights reflecting off
the mirror where the bottles are lined
like a firing-squad studying their targets
makes the ice, stacked on top of ice,
very sexy, surprisingly beautiful & this
is my burden, I see Beauty in everything, [End Page 770]
everywhere. How can one cringe upon
hearing of a six year-old boy snatched
from a mall outside of London, two
beggarly boys luring him to the train
tracks with a bag of popcorn only to beat
his head into a pulp of bad cabbage!
Even now, I can smell them
holding his hand promising
Candyland in all its stripes & chutes.
Nine-fifteen, Don & the African-
Brazilian have lit into Capoiera.
The berimbau string stings my eyes
already blurring cognac, my eyes
trying to half-see if that's my muse
sitting up front, unrecognizable,
a blue specter. Don's wire fingers are
scraping up the ivory keys, off-
rhythm. It doesn't matter, the Connection
agrees there's room as they sway
& fall against the ceiling, a band
of white shadows wind-whipped
on a clothesline. Don's raspy hands--
more violent than a fusillade of autumn
leaves pin-wheeling like paper rain
along East River Drive in blazing reds
& yellows--hammers away, shivers in
monstrous anarchy. Don's arms arch like
orange slices squirting on my mouth's roof,
juice everywhere. His body swings up
off his haunches. The audience, surveying each
other's emotions, feels the extensions, their
bodies meld against the walls, leaving
a funeral of fingerprints as they exhale back
to their seats. Ten minutes to twelve,
I'm waving a taxi through holes
in the rain. I will tell her about tonight,
tell her how a guy named Don & his crew
The Connection hacked harmonies,
smashed scales, pulverized piano keys
into a mush of fudge ice cream
all in rhythm as each brutal chord
exploded in love's dawning moment.



Major L. Jackson is a graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Oregon. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Obsidian II, and Painted Bride Quarterly. He is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, MacDowell Artist Colony, and Pew Fellowships in the Arts. Currently, he serves as Assistant Professor of English at Xavier University of Louisiana.

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