Herbie Mann at the Village Gate
Spring, 1965
Sure, you can hear people talking now and then
maybe riffing on the tune, applause
not overdone, cocktails to be put down.
Cigarette smoke shades the recording,
or maybe it’s just Collins’ light strokes
on the crash, an enveloping heartbeat.
But, you’re there even if you’ll never make it
to the Gate, temple of jazz, of cool—
Billy, Roger, Charlie, and you in your bedroom
with candles, a poster from Spain, a Rouault print,
no booze, no dope, just Mann’s muted mellowness.
As Hardy plays the vibraharp, the low ceiling
compresses soul into something intimate
and other at the same time, the way
the four of you—your feet almost touching—
are gliding closer to the start of college,
the membrane between you and the coming world
growing thinner by the hour. The birth,
at least this night, is not something vast so much
as velvet, slow-dancing notes in a soft-lit womb.
Portrait, 1938
All she wanted was a few good books,
a couple of friends, some cigarettes,
a piano, either large or small,
and a window, every now and then,
through which to stare and ponder the sea.
What she ended up with was a man,
two boys, a dog, and nightly highballs—
a masked artist among aristocrats,
a Chopin admired mostly for her looks.
Poems by J. Stephen Rhodes have appeared in over seventy journals, including Shenandoah, Tar River Poetry, and Cimarron Review, as well as several international reviews. Wind Publications has published his two poetry collections, The Time I Didn’t Know What to Do Next and What Might Not Be. He has won a number of literary awards including two fellowships from the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences, and selection as a reader for the Kentucky Great Writers Series. Most recently, he won First Prize in Still: The Journal’s annual poetry contest. He holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine-Stonecoast and a Ph.D. from Emory University.