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Billie Holiday portrait by Vakseen

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Almost Silent

She started to scat, I started to cry.
My tears taste like salt baked on my lips.
I hear her soft voice
like the river I walk to each morning.
I carry a jar to give her the river.

She gives me snapshots of her body
swinging with the Bass, her fingers
snapping with drums, memories of her eyes
shut as she sings, her face illuminated.

I sleep and wake to her voice.
She’s in the foreground of my life.
I no longer hear the freight train,
it’s almost silent.

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Jerrice J. Baptiste is a poet and author of eight books. Her writing has been published in The Yale Review, Kosmos Journal; The Tulane Review, The Lake Poetry Journal, The Minetta Review, Breathe Free Press and many more. Her poems and collaborative song-writing are also featured on the Grammy award winning album: Many Hands -Family Music for Haiti.

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Born in Athens, GA (1979) and raised in Jacksonville, FL, Otha Davis III (also known as  Vakseen) is a self-taught, museum-exhibited artist and a multi-platinum music executive, producer & songwriter.  While working on hit records has played a driving force in his career, Vakseen has been an active realist painter since moving to Los Angeles in 2011. Known for his Vanity Pop, collage-influenced paintings, his artwork has been exhibited by the Ontario Museum of History & Art, Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, Spectrum Miami/Art Basel, Adidas, Vans, BBC World News, HBO’s Insecure, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Flinders Lane Gallery, Zhou B Art Center, Julien’s Auctions, Gallery 1988, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, the University of California Los Angeles, Bombay Saaphire Gin, the city of Los Angeles, Gallery 825, Abend Gallery,   Baton Rouge Gallery, and Soho House London. His artwork has also been published in various magazines in print and online including American Art Collector, Buzzfeed, Complex Magazine, Juxtapoz Magazine, Hi-Fructose Magazine, LA Weekly, Vibe Magazine, PoetsArtists, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, Professional Artist Magazine, High Times Magazine, Kolaj Magazine, Gay Times, BOOOOOOOM and Supersonic Art.

To visit his website, click here

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Listen to a 1956 recording of Billie Holiday singing Ray Noble’s “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You”

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