Sexy Jazz on My Birthday

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Trust, Boney James blowin' sax on the radio and your e-mail, your question: “Look, I want to say, aren't you tired of this? Tired of being alone?” Memory of an answer, but not an answer about me, an answer to her – the almost beautiful Russian girl. I’m at work early, it’s winter, dark outside. The girl comes in, petite and sleek, in tall black lace up boots and fluffy red muffler, long silky hair veiling her almond face. She’s crying, hard, nose running. I stand up, hug her, ask what’s wrong. NPR she wails.

What? A segment, I’d heard it earlier too in the car on the way to work, the day’s continuous programming loop—a couple, one dies, the meaning of a life together hits home. The girl is alone, not special someone, no one to love her. She had Lasik eye surgery to get rid of the thick glasses, breast augmentation to plump her chest beneath silky, unblemished skin, the perfect hip to waist ratio shapes naturally.

She wears low-cut tops and tight fitting jeans, an awesome artist, but has a jutting eye tooth that mars her crowded smile. She’s alone and sobbing. I tell her I understand. I really do. I tell her to visualize what she wants, be open to possibilities even when it hurts, that love is like basketball, don’t push for the shot, let the game come to you, I advise. It will happen.

She whimpers, asks: what do you know about basketball? I only know in that moment the barrier broke, that she was open, ready, and a man would come walking in any moment. I felt afraid. He did walk in a few weeks later, a photographer she met at a party, a lank man with a wobbly eye barely noticeable in dim light at downtown galleries. People venture to see his shocking work, share his vision, clutch each other half drunk and look for a room, or an alley, to kiss for a while, to hope in intoxication that they’ve found something real and won’t be alone anymore.

His house was falling down when the girl moved in, but she made a stand, said it had to change and the battles began. There were end-of-day yelling matches between them on the phone, color selection for the bathroom, counter tops for the kitchen. I’d hunker in my cubicle until quitting time and flee, smarting from the words and tone. Everyone complained about it.

She wanted a lipstick red leather couch so we went shopping after work, found the perfect one, giggled about black lingerie, went to the man with the wandering eye who went ballistic. Yelled at me for tipping his hand. Since we’d expressed interest to the furniture store owner, he couldn’t go in and dicker the price down. I’d already given away his bargaining position, had lost before the game began. He would never pay full price.

The girl and I went to the garden to look at her vegetables and sunflowers, flitted with butterflies. He came out and yelled at me some more in the side yard. I left, haven’t been back. She still doesn’t have a couch, sleeps on the floor, her shiny blonde hair trailing across the floor, alone. He recently gave her a pretty candy box with a dead bird inside.

My husband died about a year and a half ago. We were divorced, but after two children and 40 years, even up to the end he gave me pretty birthday presents, he is my husband. He died alone. The Coroner listed chronic alcoholism as the cause of death, left off the real reasons -- loneliness and despair. I couldn't save him and now I’m alone, not interested in getting back in the game, handling the ball, taking shots. I’m tired of playing and everything tastes of decay. Here’s what I’m working on today:



Courtesy Anna Lear The Laughing Raven

 A Cat on a Chimney

                               Inspired by jazz pianist Keiko Matsui


blind aria rosa walks

glides bops on shapely legs

bumps into popup smiles

shifts cockeyed hat her

eyes pop off blank faces

spying breasts plump rump

swinging boney james

ooh wee



slide shuffle bebop aria senses

subtle shifts in dot time sees

black to gauzy gray feels

a strain riff between her

legs shifts eight to the bar

hip hop honey

ooh wee



she hears it enter this first

silver pubic bebop follicle

vamping in pink pumps

through the slip slide

of her bit parts hips

rolling into taboo

ooh wee



masks her wandering eyes

behind rose-tinted glasses

heart shaped lenses – not

much to see – unplugs

the lamp hums while

lovers under covers

jam blind to the bone

ooh wee