Le Jazz Hot — Blackbird Archive

← v2n2, Fall 2003

The finger of God comes down like whatever you care to call it—

Storm, or flame, or a chemical bolt of indifference—

What counts is the gesture, the color of light, the scar.

A sharkskin suit and wingtips in the closet.

A garter-belt and a condom in the bureau drawer.

Conditions keep changing, one moment all essence,

The next all shit, and everything in between.

The snapshot on the table is heartless; you see in the eyes

Of the woman that she knows what ending means.

Closure is a crack in the chest like a rim-shot,

Syncopation of stop-time, a diminished chord in the brain.

desire violence music

T.R. Hummer

T.R. Hummer is the author of fifteen books of poetry and essays, most recently In These States (Jacar Press, 2020) and Eon (Louisiana State University Press, 2018). His most recent poems have appeared in The New Yorker , New York Quarterly , and Rattle . A former professor, he served as editor-in-chief for the Kenyon Review , The New England Review , and The Georgia Review . He has received numerous awards and honors, including a National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Grant in poetry, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and the Donald Justice Award for Poetry. Formerly a professor and editor, he now lives in Cold Spring, New York. Photo by David Limburg