Colette Jonopulos
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Photo courtesy of Mike Jonopulos |
Colette Jonopulos lives, writes, and edits in Eugene, Oregon.
Her chapbook, The Burden of Wings, was published by
Rattlesnake Press in 2004. Her poetry has appeared or is
forthcoming in Clackamas Literary Review, HeartLodge, cho,
PDQ, In the Arms of Words: Poems for Disaster Relief and
Under Our Skin: North American Poetic Responses to Fernando
Pessoa. She currently co-edits and publishes Tiger’s Eye:
A Journal of Poetry.
Tiger's Eye web site:
www.tigerseyejournal.com
Tiger blog:
http://tigerseyepoet.blogspot.com
She can be reached at:
tigerseyepoet@yahoo.com, or
colettejonopulos@yahoo.com
Her now-defunct blog can still be found at:
http://colettej.blogspot.com
Colette is also the author of
littlesnake broadside #3. If you’d like a free copy, send an
SASE to Rattlesnake Press.
Colette Jonopulos Poems
Daddy-O
(or what is was all about . . . )
it wasn’t the music
never was the music
only background noise
for the drive down I-5
Oregon to California
and back, curved
road above Lake
Shasta, familiar like the
lines of your back
it wasn’t the drive
never the drive
but the rhythm felt
through the wheel
One For Daddy-O’s
riff played over and
over and over until
I swear the arrow on
the CD player’s back
button wore down
on the drive
that wasn’t about
mileage or
road conditions
or the music
but about the
rhythm of your
back muscles,
deceptive curve
of road above
Lake Shasta
Barber Conjures Coltrane
—in the wake of a dream
shine the light on blackbird as he flees his
wooden house—magnificent winged bird
larger than a man—wingspan a sheet of black
oilcloth and me beneath a tent of birdsong
Coltrane knew the sorrow given at birth
wound his notes into midnight mourning
blackbird
bye-bye
Barber gives birth to sorrow’s mother
swaddles every hurt in blues—sugar’s sweet and so is
she—voice throaty with
late late
nights
her wingspan covers the
worn black and whites
piano and sax improvise on Morpheus’ stage
her fine-boned fingers riding the keys
his sax ascending
ascending
both musicians awake and dreaming blackbirds
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