Shareef & Stella, Snowlit
How cold the world at 4 a.m.
How abandoned the walks,
the intersections, the store windows.
How noisy the sleepers must be,
making way through crowds & mobs
of dreamers, dreams. How are the shadows
getting around beneath their lids,
how are they slow-dragging, moving
like wet jazz horns in the dark dancehall
of the body. How long will the lovers play
before dawn gets down to business?
Where, in this wasteland of
the West Village, should a woman live
if not in her own music?
He pulled his trumpet from his bag,
like a man pulling
a dress down a woman.
Finding her to be a flare
in snowfall. Light lonely gems
opening in broken ears.
Bereft of any star or love,
Stella begins. Backlit like a heart
in a field of its own hush.
I am going to be this woman.
I can sing tonight.
I’m empty, watchful
as a blackened eye. Don’t
tell me the blues can bear
a woman’s perfume.
Play oblivion, baby.
Blow the sweetest elegy
of cold I’ll ever feel.
I will rock this Village to ruins.
I’m you. I’m lonely.
The best starlight
you never glimpsed.
I’m moving
like static around a lost
sound in a song
you won’t remember.
—RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS