Listening to Johnny Hodges’ “Texas Blues”

The notes nearly drip with humidity.
It’s too hot, says Hodges’ alto sax,

to do anything but let yourself be bathed
by the scent of mistflowers on a shrub.

Surely, a glass is sweating on a table nearby
as that sax groans like a lovesick katydid

and the piano ripples a salacious laugh.
The music undulates its generous flanks.

Then the clarinet—listen to that licorice stick preach!
It’s the sax, tho, that woos me, bill and coos me. Man,

that silver-tongued alto can sweet-talk! When I set down
my drink, the ice falls so hard, it bruises the gin.

Daily Injection Blues

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The saxophone screams the sting
of medicine burrowing in.
The clarinet’s moan is my moan.
Something to thin the blood.
Because it’s thickened with all
the boiling? “Texas Blues” rues
the rattlesnake fang of the needle
striking the belly’s pale pillow.
Ice cubes should be bumping
together on the slick, circular
dance floor of a sweaty glass,
not soothing salty skin.
There is nothing to do but groan
the grumbling rumble of an alto
tumbling toward deepest blue.

Yvonne Zipter is the author of the poetry collections Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, The Patience of Metal (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), and Like Some Bookie God. Her poems have appeared in numerous periodicals over the years, and her published poems are currently being sold in Chicago in two vending machines to raise money for the nonprofit arts organization Arts Alive Chicago. She is also the author of two nonfiction books: Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend and Ransacking the Closet. Her Russian historical novel, Infraction, will be published in 2021. She is retired from the University of Chicago Press, where she was a manuscript editor. Hands down, her favorite sweet food is pie, and she and her wife actually had pie instead of cake at their wedding.

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