POETRY

Home now

Sitting on my stoop

The evening birds are starting up

And some tree frogs

And the chirr of the locust

Which I love so much.

All of this

Just as night

Begins to change places with the day.

Like a curtain

Being pulled across the miles.

Like one body

Becoming another, darker body.

You can feel the heartbeat

If you know where to lay your hands

POEM FOR MY SON

Born in the autumn

but in Miami,

in Miami it’s warm in the autumn,

under a harvest moon.

Bearer of our name

into the new world,

with ancient blood. How kind

the sky is

to give him to us

in our solitary need

for someone to love

inside the purity of a love, like this.

Born in autumn

but in Miami,

in Miami it’s warm in the autumn.

I won’t say the world stood still.

Blood of my blood, blood

of a long chain of being,

east and west; oh

the stories he will know

HIP-HOP

NOVEL

A Mile to Cold Water

As he had for as long as he could remember, Kenzo Souffrant woke to the sounds of jazz in his head. It wasn’t the early Queens sun creeping through the only window in his room that woke him. Not the click-clank and rumble of the N train outside, or the moans of his neighbor’s wife, suffering from dementia that bled through the building’s thin walls. There was only sweet melody and grace, I, IV, V echoing inside of his skull. Kenzo stretched his long frame out in his bed, surrendering to the morning that obliged him to wake, dress, and venture out into the world where everyone waited as if when he opened his door every person on the planet would be there staring right at him.

Out of bed Kenzo dropped to the ground and did fifty pushups, sucking and pushing breath from his belly as he controlled the steady rise and fall of his body above the floor. He went to the bathroom directly across from his room, pausing to look in the mirror. Running across the bridge of his nose and under his right eye was a two-inch scar almost healed. It had been a fight over nothing and a box cutter that had put it there. The story he told his mother was elaborate enough, but she knew better and all too well what kind of friends he had and how they spent their time, hiding her worry behind quiet looks and her prayers that her son would find a way to live.

Kenzo’s mother was cooking in the kitchen towards the back of their small two-room apartment in Astoria, on a block of a hundred different tongues. White rice and miso soup, small, cold salted mackerel prepared the way her mother and grandmother had prepared it in Kurume, in the South of Japan, where she was born before leaving at nineteen for America to pursue her study of classical piano. They ate silently, except for the dialogue held between their chopsticks clinking lightly on the ends of their rice bowls. The room smelled like fish, paper sheet music, and the charred smoke of incense. Kenzo barely stopped to chew between bites…

Shigoto wa (Do you have to work?) Kenzo's mom asked in Japanese as she sipped her tea.

I don’t work Mondays, Kenzo responded. He didn’t lift his gaze off of his food.

Ja, kyo nanisuruno (So what are you going to do?) she asked.

I don’t know, probably get up with Benny, Kenzo replied.

And what will you do with him all day? she asked pointedly.

The last time she had seen Kenzo’s best friend Benny was a week prior when Kenzo had invited him over for dinner to celebrate his return from a short stint in jail for possession of more than a little bit of weed. Kenzo couldn’t help but smile at her accent, which she retained even after living in New York City for the past thirty years.

You can take the girl out of Japan, but…, Kenzo thought to himself before answering her.

Shiran (I don’t know!), he snapped back finally.

She sighed, stood up from the table, slowly walked to her room down the hall, and shut the door quietly behind her. A minute later the delicate, brisk opening of Debussy’s Andante Espressivo, one of her favorites, began to sound on her small upright piano. Kenzo also sighed, went back up to his room, and finished dressing. He left the house with twenty dollars in his pocket, his keys, and his tenor saxophone strapped to his back. He put on a slightly worn pair of Jordans by the front door and stepped out onto the stoop where his landlord Mr. Boosalis was dragging trash cans to the curb.

Hello Ken-zo, he said firmly, all the sounds of Greece in every word he spoke.

Come to play me a song while I do the dirty work?

Gotta run Mr. B, Kenzo replied as he closed the front gate that stood on the other side of a tiny, bare lawn behind him.

You know your father used to play for me and Mrs. B all the time. Sometimes, when I didn’t even ask him. Mr. Boosalis laughed, as he stood up straight, only now examining Kenzo from head to toe.

You look just like him.

I know Mr. B, Kenzo replied as he turned to leave.

Your mother too!

I know Mr. B. People say that to me all the time.

No, no, I mean your mother used to come over too. They’d come over, your mother and father, and play for us. Mrs. B would piss and moan, but I’d pull out a bottle of ouzo from the basement and we’d drink and just listen to them.

I gotta go, Mr. B, Kenzo called back after a short pause.

Of course, you do.

Kenzo turned to go.

You know, your mother hasn’t paid last month’s rent, and it’s already almost the 15th? Mr. Boosalis called out.

Listen, I’m sorry, Kenzo started in…

It’s ok, it’s ok. I’m not worried about that… but if you need anything....

Thanks, Mr. B. Promise, I’ll get it to you by the end of the week.

Kenzo, Mr. B started in again…

Yeah? Kenzo answered, a little less patient.

Help is not a bad thing to ask for when you need it, Mr. Boosalis said.

I’ll catch you later Mr. B. Kenzo turned his back on the old man, who had been much like a grandfather to him for his entire life. Mr. Boosalis watched Kenzo for a moment as he walked away before turning back to the trash cans…

Full text available upon request