He went to sleep one night and never woke up
the second draft of his latest poem on the night table
beside her blue glass earrings. Music –
hot, hungry vocals, guitar licks, saxophone notes
wailing around his old orange cat who slept
oblivious and faithful on the pillow beside him.
He couldn’t sleep without it and she found him
in the middle of Etta James tearin ‘em up
Live at the Parisian Room where nobody was sleepin.
She’d come in to get her earrings off the table
and bent to kiss him goodbye just as the last notes
of Etta’s dynamite third set ended and the music
stopped. She heard the stunned music
of her own voice, “oh my God,” as she touched his
cheek in disbelief fighting strange grating notes
of hysteria swirling and rising from her belly up
to her throat. She slumped against the table
saw a blur of orange beside him, the cat still sleeping.
He was a poet who painted houses. He slept
with her between stanzas and odd jobs. She knew music
was his real passion. They’d sit at the kitchen table
late at night. She’d toss her hair and sing along to his
favorite songs, all slinky and jazzed up
in her red thrift store dress, murdering the high notes.
Sometimes, usually during winter, she’d find notes.
Rising in the see-your-breath bedroom, sullen and sleepy
she’d stumble out to the kitchen and find one stuck up
on the fridge, “my dearest Etta or Ella or Aretha, your music
kicks ass,” signed “your biggest fan.” She knew his
dream. That last poem she found on the table
was a song. She sat for a long time beside the table
holding that scrap of paper, humming, crying, imagining the notes
of a guitar, a piano, a stormy-blue voice, and the expression on his
face as he listened. Now, during the silent chill of sleepless
nights she hears only the sad ruin of this unexpected music
and the endless encores swallow her up.
In her red dress at the kitchen table, the cat asleep
on her lap, the raspy notes of kick ass music,
a vigil for him. Etta tearin ‘em up.