Dynamo - Bronx Science's Literary Magazine

"YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL"

You, the little boy

Slacking brother to the overachieving sisters

Who hasn’t found the shell of skin that fits him perfectly right yet

And inching into manhood nonetheless.

You are beautiful.

 

You, the teenage girl

Pushing the stroller of your new born baby

Label reading ‘statistic’ hanging around your neck like a dog chain

Finding a boy who will learn to love a mother’s body

On a sixteen year old face

While spending your nights learning the notes of your baby’s hum

And the shape of her body until it’s commonplace.

You are beautiful.

 

You, the single father

To the daughter fighting overseas

While you sleep through her recycled dreams

Hoping you can’t hear the bullets shooting from her gun.

Piercing hearts planted in front of her, she pulled her finger back

Afraid that if she didn’t

You would wake up to your daughter shipped home in a body bag

With a typed up letter reading

“Sorry, we didn’t know how much blood it takes to spell Freedom.”

You are beautiful.

 

You, the woman

Body vandalized, soul broken into minefields

When he forced himself into you

And you changed your name to victim

Rocking the empty cradle of his baby that will soon be aborted

You changed your name to controversy

But in coming time, you’ll see

You too, are beautiful.

 

You, the paper pushing, pizza every Friday, white-collar worker

You, the mediocre artist striving for extraordinary with your daytime job as a waiter

You, the off-Broadway actor and the local wedding singer

You are all beautiful.

Not because I say so and not because you’re typical or abnormal

You’re beautiful because the word beautiful is spelled in more ways than one

Because in every syllable, vowel, and consonant, in there or not

Beautiful spells You.

 

"Jazz Bar"

 Up on 117th there's a bar

where a man can loosen his tie over a drink

The doorframe sags

and it ain't got no name

 

A sunken man watches the doorway like a blind dog

 

The lights are dim

and the walls are stained with gin

 

On a Thursday night

the bowler hats and the cigarettes

and the drunkards and the suits

Come to lounge on shot glass rims

 

And in August the small room swells with heat and sweat

 

Four clumsy men sit at the lit end

and by 10 they spit a sloppy tune

 

Jazz has a stink

A kind of sweet stink

A pepper stink

 

The saxophone

makes a primal groan

 

Like an undersexed coyote

A long slow wallop

Seductive and angry

and slow

 

The drummer drops a lazy beat

It comes from some sodden beer-soaked place in his heart

It drags its feet in an ancient tap dance

 

A lady in muted red

steps to the silver mic

with a tired vitality

 

Her voice is deep and hoarse

It plows like an old workhorse

She caresses the drunken hearts

of the men leaning over their stools

 

She sings to them of youthful love

She sings to them of living easy

 

That drum taps a sweet sloppy beat

that dances slow and steady out the door

and spills with the light onto a cobbled Harlem street

 

That jazz walks a drunken walk all the way home