I heard you once...
Scotch whisky in a coffee cup,
cotton undershirt and dress pants.
You pulled out my rented sax
(new pads; tinny sound)
and blew fat sounds.

Bare feet on the furnace floor,
just a piece of 5/8” fireguard between us;
I could hear the air
escaping
before the note,
and then
the sounding notes,
fragmented phrases
repeated,
and communing pauses
of “Body and Soul.”

Your version:
I heard a Baptist preacher
preach it once
in Bristol, Tennessee.
His heart was broken,
he told us. And
his sins exposed.

And then it was Coleman Hawkins:
needle and record scratching over
16th notes,
8th notes.
His body and soul.

Later I knew
why you had a Hammond organ in your house
(tenor saxophone in the closet,
no reeds, silently sweet).
It was the many options-
rhumba or bossa nova,
bassoon or oboe.
Other voices.



A pastiche is always
less personal,
like imitation really.

Perhaps
like cigarettes and scotch,
we can endure
just so many epiphanies.

- Ken Fox