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“Woman Thinking,” by James Brewer
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Motherland of the Mind
My Motherland, like:
Jack Kerouac
like
blow-on-subject-seas-of-thought like
hip hip Ginsberg clackin’ right at it, like
eye on the rug, boy
eye on the rug—let’s lose ourselves
and breathe so deeply
heart, beat, beat—Art’s foot on the floor, with
jazz master Davis driving minds insane—
they pipe their souls to the Promised Land,
epoxying art in the raw
on the criss-cross, lending us charms
against their rage, we’re such a far cry
west of neutral like
look:
…………….if nobody tried to live this way—
My Motherland, like:
Billy Collins
like
this is the way
we like it
I think, like
let’s you and I eat our weight
in Cheerios, til we see the whites
of our own bones grin, for
multitudes, multitudes, very well
says Whitman, launching our souls
til the bridge be laid, we were comrades then
and brothers now—I can see it stark
on her lipstick smile
the limitless pour into my bottomless mug
the diner lights buzzing, the jazz air
flowing, she asks for my hand
and we bow in grace.
The Motherland, like:
Paul Theroux
like
the inspired man’s way of heading
home, like
away we launch, our packs to the neck
month after month on the rocks of the east, our
wild, idle, mountain
abandon, melanoma promised, now
to sprout, grafting the spirit out of
pale refinement, releasing inertia
of the funeral pyres.
A soul so sound
our best composer,
cosmic harmony sings me to sleep—
my god
how cozy is one’s own shelter!
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___
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Josie Rozell writes to the long-notes of Nina & Billie and laces the stanzas with a little Miles Davis. She lives in Hawaii where she plays jazz mandolin and is currently at work on her first collection of poetry, Articulated Soul, coming December 2020. More of her work can be found at www.thehydrogenjukebox.com, and she can be reached at [email protected].
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Listen to a 1954 of Miles Davis playing “Blue Haze,” with Art Blakey (drums), Horace Silver (piano) and Percy Heath (bass)
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