Billie Holiday

back up past the final cadence, when you hear in the heat of night or on a humid afternoon long ago her man followed a train from the rock road of boozy blues leaving her to railroad our psyches as she glides over corn pone notes, sends lyrics tumbling as dropped phonemes into that dark pool of sorrow

each night she blesses the smile that’s got it’s own cloud hovering on cotton balls over us as a sunset sound mass on our faces

look into those eyes shuttered away from the camera ivory-ebony slits split with pain dive where she plummets just for a change of heart aspirate through her clavicle to stretch out to the rim of uttered dust into her outer space

yet her phrases linger long after others fly.

©Diane Stevenson Schmolka .

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