Grape-flesh of lips, espresso dreads.
Lowdown twang
Of chromatic variations, throat-lumps,
Wet serrations. Revelations
From a monkey’s gland.

Wringing hands in the murky twilight,
Rivers catching rain. Blazon eyes,
The color of absinthe,

Wooing the wild serpentine,
Shoulder blades clacking,
Summoning the kitten’s cry,
The wolves’ submission.

Card tricks and ventriloquisms.
Sad clowns and flailing shamans.
Jazz hands and bongos and trances.
Offering up grotesque truths,
Cutting through the hokum,
Ghost-infested blackness.

Moon-grown sighs, cloud-cotton vistas.
Warble of smoke rings, castanets,
Incantations. Co-opted, appropriated.
Dispossessed, unrequited.

Blues is a rusty old horn. Blues is
A trickster whose woman is a cheat,
A woman whose man stands accused.
Black is the depths and the brilliance,

And the bitterness, chopped into shards
Incense smoke and earth. Darkness,
Eloquent in all its kinks. Dark strata
Of memory, of history.

Chris D’Errico is a mixed media artist, musician and writer based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has worked as a short order cook, a neon sign maker’s helper, and a pest control technician, among other vocational adventures. D’Errico’s poems and visual art have appeared in various analog and digital mediums for the past 20+ years.