The Sunday Poem: “The Eye Tapes…Monument to my Jazzy Eye” by Anita Lerek

February 24th, 2024

The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work.

Anita Lerek reads her poem at its conclusion.

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“Zambramomania” by Roberto Nucci/CC BY-NC-SA-4.0 DEED

The Eye Tapes
……..Monument to my Jazzy Eye

Evergreens and pink lawn
chairs sang through my windowpane
until silenced by grime
and retinal leakage.
I pass my good eye
back and forth;
a bear prowls the other,
a swelling darkness, blood poppies
fall on its memory.

Nights are stunt theatres,
always dark. Don’t fall, they say.
Where are your wings?
Don’t you see the light,
the rushing bodies,
the speeding bike that doesn’t stop.

One eye is a trumpet solo
piercing the world with luminescence;
the other is irradiated,
starved for blood, erased.

In the silks of the night
you are an evening flower,
playing with the moon that pulls you
going light
…going dark
……wave after wave
the runs, the growls
…turning
……turning
locked together.

This one minute,
granite chill,
swell and fade.
You play at the top of my head,
everything is here.

Listen to Anita Lerek read her poem

Author’s Note: *Top of my Head is a musical composition by jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove.

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Anita Lerek is an avid jazz fan. She doesn’t write about jazz per se, rather, through the lens of jazz. This is one way that she taps personal stuff. Some recent poetry publication credits include Cultural Daily, Beltway Poetry, and One Art Journal of Poetry. She was nominated for Best of the Net, 2022 (for a jazz infused poem). She is author of chapbook, Of History and Being (2019). Click here to visit her on Facebook, and click here for Instagram.

Watch a 2017 live studio session of the late trumpeter Roy Hargrove playing “Top of My Head,” with Justin Robinson (alto sax); Tadataka Unno (piano); Ameen Saleem (bass) and Quincy Phillips (drums). [KNKX Public Radio]