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photo by William Gottlieb*

Shelly Manne, New York, c. 1947

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Today I Fell in Love with Shelly Manne

And the clouds
unfastened their seat belts
and fell across the roads and rivers
so Pittsburgh looked like it was a flying pig
but no
if it was love
my wife said
you could send him a letter at the speed of light
and he wouldn’t get it for a million years
kind of like regular mail
kind of like a regular pig
but
he’s dead I said
thinking is there music after death?
music with Barney Kessel
music with Ray Brown
and love?
only the gypsies know
she said
they know what to do with pigs also
they pass them like cymbals overhead
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John Stupp’s third poetry collection.Pawleys Island.was published in 2017. His manuscript.Summer Job.won the 2017 Cathy Smith Bowers Poetry Prize and was published in August 2018. A chapbook entitled.When Billy Conn Fought Fritzie Zivic.will be published by Red Flag Poetry in 2020.  He lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  From 1975-1985 he worked professionally as a mediocre jazz guitarist.

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Shelly Manne, Barney Kessel and Ray Brown play “On Green Dolphin Street,” a 1957 recording

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*Photo of Shelly Manne by William Gottlieb, from the William P. Gottlieb/Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund Collection, Music Division, (Library of Congress)

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