I am trying to collect my thoughts about the Tuesday of the first week of November 

Dear Pen pal, 

It seems all I can muster to listen to is jazz right now. 

It is Friday, now 

(and I am thinking of the worst Tuesday a few days prior) 

And I’ve got some humming on vinyl 

Wes & Bill & Billie & Art & Miles & John & Duke & Nina. 

It doesn’t dull the noise outside or the noise in my head but

It is rhythmic 

And sequential. 

The snare doesn’t let up and the bass will always pluck from tender hands.

And it is smooth & soft & all I can do is listen to jazz. 

Saxophone hymns & Trumpet psalms. 

Besides the visceral trolley ride that chugs on my collarbone, 

(for which jazz is a lavender cloth, warm) 

(because it is the most uncomfortable mode to get by, over cobblestones),

I listen to jazz because Ellison writes about jazz 

And Black people took to the streets (present tense)

With jazz held in their knuckles 

As they clawed & cried & implored & defied 

For people who look like me to love them and see them; to protect 

Their wives & children and to stop using faith 

(that is all about love & justice & mercy & peace) (who was Jesus if not that?)

As an excuse to ignore the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

I listen to jazz because it crooned 

Through alleyways and parted cigarette clouds 

To adorn the tonsils from which whispers of a revolution came. 

It sat in the Mecca of drawing rooms while stories & plans & strategies 

Were devised by 

Artists & poets & musicians & store clerks & the milkman & mothers & sisters. 

Abolition is the staccato of jazz. 

Harlem jazz, Harlem liberation. 

Phyllis Wheatley & Fredrick Douglass & W.E.B Du Bois. 

And the subversive opacity of a tactical switchblade of love, hidden in plain sight. 

And so, dearest pen pal,

As I sit here with Miles crying Jeru,

Do I see images on my palms of 

All the women & queer people & trans people & union workers & middle class farmers 

& immigrants (with children just like we have them) (who love them just like we love them) & people with disabilities & all of the least of these. 

And I see jazz

And how many drawing rooms we still have to fill. 

How many passes of a backhand cigarette in a back alley we have yet to share amongst us. 

And of the five thousand, and the samaritan, and the prodigal son, and the healed woman, and the convicted thieves. 

And I feel so much fear & I want to make a garden & take down the fence that separates my yard with my neighbor. 

And I want to know why 53% of white women voted for someone 

Who would harm their daughters 

If he was alone in a back alley 

In the place that is no longer Harlem 

But condos and highrises. 

And I want to know why so many men hugged their moms on Wednesday morning

(or any morning since) 

Or kissed their partner, or loved their sister,

And still voted against them. 

And I think of jazz 

And the little man at the Cheehaw Station 

And how the tears to be seen & heard & cared about 

Have stained cheeks of windswept faces for many, many winters. 

The song is ending

And I will get my bag 

And walk down the stairs 

And try to peer around the corner 

And inside the cupboards 

For the little man behind the stove. 

And I will try to fill alleyways & entryways & bathrooms & kitchen tables 

& when I am there, and there are people (all people) gathered, 

I will see the ghosts of mothers & fathers & sisters & brothers & all of the glorious in-betweens 

And I will think “this has always been a noble battle.”

And I will read and listen to jazz

And whisper in doorways of the revolution still to come, 

and of the history of 

abolition & mutual aid & tyranny & coalition & community & female rage 

& love (love, above all else). 

I will scuff my boots with Harlem’s desire

And turn the cassette to the B side. 

There is work to do. There is jazz to play.