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Barbara Bonney
Jazz at the Promontory, Thursday Night
His head bows over the keys like Schroeder,
part boy, part genius, image blurs in the black
lacquered lid of the piano that curves like a woman's back.
The notes are whispers that hammer
black and white through my shell. Music skips from icy
shards to hell and back; skitters like mice on a tile floor.
His face lifts, winces, grins in bliss, magic
spills out his fingers, gushing hot chocolate
on ice cream, bumping over nuts and cherries,
drenching me.
Grand Piano Sex
I'm falling in love with keys,
with black and white seduction,
chromatic, romantic,
bared hammer-on-strings.
Jazz slides my spine
one vertebra at a time.
Fingers light and sure
flutter a vortex of sound
that drowns me in a sea of unknown
where Monk and Duke caress my darker skin.
The masters are all here
in an ecstasy of burning ivory flesh
and heavenly blackness.