Paradelle for Late Night Jazz
Gianna Russo
Woman’s voice trembles with bruised azaleas.
Woman’s voice trembles with bruised azaleas,
piano, saxophone-dusky harmonics.
Piano, saxophone, dusky harmonics,
bruise woman’s voice. Harmonics tremble
with piano, dusky azaleas, saxophone.
A kind of blue torch for when memories break.
A kind of blue torch for when memories break.
Moonlight in three or four shades, but beautiful
moonlight. In three or four shades, but beautiful.
Blue shades of moonlight break, but in three or four
kind memories: a torch for beautiful, when
man’s voice rumbles with rusty train-yards.
Man’s voice rumbles with rusty train-yards,
melodies of clouds, trumpet, guitar.
Melodies of clouds trumpet guitar.
Rusty melodies rumble with man’s clouds,
trumpet, voice of train-yards, guitar.
Blue kind of voice, man’s voice, woman’s,
rumbles with piano, trumpet, bruised harmonics,
trembles with dusky train-yards, guitar, saxophone,
three or four moonlight melodies of azaleas.
A rusty torch for when memories break.
Clouds, in shades, but beautiful.
Gianna Russo is the author of the full-length poetry collection Moonflower (Kitsune Books, 2011) and founding editor of YellowJacket Press, currently Florida’s only publisher of poetry chapbook manuscripts, and presenter of the Peter Meinke Prize in Poetry. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has published poems inTampa Review, Ekphrasis, Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Florida Humanities Council Forum, Karamu, The Bloomsbury Review, The Sun, Poet Lore, The MacGuffin, and Calyx, among others.Her creative nonfiction has appeared in the Tampa Bay Times (formerly St. Petersburg Times). She teaches at St. Leo University and lives in Tampa.