Poem by Alice Weiss

(Kind of Blue)

Feet up on the coffee table, I loosen my tie. Miles climbs hills,
Jimmy Cobb whooshes cymbals, side-a-the road sounds.

She comes into the living room. “It’s the mellow Miles.”
I say, “Maybe, maybe not.” She says, “The early Miles.”

I say, “The early us.” Miles takes a switchback,
crossing, crossing back, beeps like a car.

“He’s playing wake up. Like a bugle. What’s that called, Reveille?”
I say, “No. Babe, if it sounds like a bugle it’s playing Taps.”

“You mean something by that?” She looks like I better not.
Jimmy Cobb switches to drumsticks. Sax is creeping slow.

“Baby, hear it. Coltrane’s coming in to cool it down.”
“Sweet,” she says. Cooler.

Me. “Never going any place too hot. Keep us out of trouble.”
She says, “So it is the mellow Miles.” “Not the mellow,”

She slings her hip, puts a fist on it. “Why not?”
“Mellow’s too mod-er-ate. Miles heats on low. It’s there.

“How’s the heat, there?” Fist on her other hip. I say,
“Listen to the Trane.” She pats her hip to the slow beat.

“Mmm going higher. All that. All that. . . melody.”
“Arpeggio, not melody.” “And the difference?” she asks,

no . . . she says. Maybe she just is. Against me.
Anything I say. So I say, “It’s just different.”

She says, “So what?”
I say, “That’s it, So What.”

Alice Weiss’ poems have been appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Soul-Lit.com, Ibbetson Street, Liberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology; Poetry Super Highway; Wilderness House Literary Review; Muddy River Poetry Review, and Jewish Currents. Until 2011 she was the unofficial Poet-in-Residence at Am HaYam, the Cape Cod Chavurah. She received an MFA in poetry from New England College in 2010 and has been studying with Tom Daley in Cambridge.

Stacy Esch lives and works in West Chester, Pennsylvania, teaching English at West Chester University. Digital art and photography are the twin passions that compete alongside her interest in writing, reading, songwriting, and gardening. She has previously published work at Turkshead Review and wordriver literary review. She is currently selling a calendar through Spruce Alley Press.