Tonight's Poet Corner: Wilted Honeysuckle Rose
Wilted Honeysuckle Rose by Belinda Roddie We used to dance to the jazz that would play on the portable radio. All the warblers and the crooners serenaded us behind microphones - thin, frail bodies of carbon and metal and webbed feet wiring, Edison's fingers grasping the vocal cords of baritones and tenor troubadours, balladeers and minstrels accompanied by a saxophone or piano. Now, when I kiss you, your mouth is full of static. I spit the incoherent fuzz out like chunks of plastic and tin, wash my tongue out with silicon and copper connecting notes to digital symphonies. You don't listen to the standards anymore - you just sit in your crackling cloud, smoking your cigars, reading a newspaper in a language I can't understand - in black and white, while the warblers wail, and the crooners cry, and every melody melts into primal guttural screaming.