Amy MacLennan   © 2011 All Rights Reserved

Charlie Parker

Bukka White
was a mountain
built by earthquakes,

and Thelonious,
water
from an old water pitcher.

Son House
was the cured leather strap
of a wash-tub bass,

and Dizzy,
a dragonfly.

Miles
was an icicle
dripping on aluminum,

and Fred McDowell,
a circular saw.

Robert Johnson
was a Butterfly Duncan,

and Blind Willie MacTell,
a new deck of cards
with maps on the backs.

And Charlie Parker played be-bop,
which any one-year-old girl knows.

 

 

Christopher Watkins
Copyright © 2011  

Christopher Watkins’debut Short Houses With Wide Porches was published by Shady Lane Press in 2008. Additional poems are published/forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Slipstream, Euphony, Southampton Review, and more. He was Writer-In-Residence at the Kerouac House, and is the recipient of a grant from the Vermont Studio Center.

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