Here's my poem from Upstairs at Duroc, Issue 12:
RINGS (for Eric Dolphy, 1964)
by Lauren Camp
On a ledge, I align 20 stones,
dark ovals smooth as the inside of my thigh, small orbs
ringed with white.
“Something Sweet, Something Tender,”
circles written when the seas retreated,
the raw song of mourning.
Dolphy’s clarinet turns a slow tide that surges and drifts.
He holds a bag of logic and many colors
fitted into keys, an anthem of sense and anger,
the loud shadow of a burden. His reed pushes, scatters.
Vibes burble on the ocean of tomorrow
as bass strings sink spasms
of plodding sadness in cool air; each returning swell
a sphere collected on a beach the size of sound.
The trumpet comes in sullen; tones drop
like an anchor.
No one realizes, and a soul bleeds.
New language forms.
Everyone collects behind the beat
until the clarinet grabs a line and knots up dusk
with ginger-sharp thought.
Understanding makes me dizzy. My pulse syncopates
in rhythm to the plucked, torn sound,
a noise that wears itself down, the chunked voice
of five men playing a deep confusion layered by time,
the sediment constantly smoothing, forever softening,
until all that remains is dark –
rimmed with a white bracelet from another era.
