blog of poet, leah umansky

It Started Like a Red Herring or a Poisson Rouge

Much like a grand dragoon took me; it was a curious sentence: a place; a heart-thump; a gasp. A kind of heroism; a game of sorts; the way glares are thrown; feet, tippy-toed; ears perched open. There were no mechanics; no informatives; reformatives;                                 (even superlatives)                         but there was this on the surface.                                          The surface of things. It contained what we cannot say. A matter-of-factness; an isness.      How is this happening? If you want to be technical, then yes, it was with words and music.                                                     The body has music; and the voice:

I love your voice.

[too early to say love?]

It does something. Not sentimentally; not emotionally, but logistically. I don’t want analogies for this – goodbye connectors – just face the lyricism. We were moving together only knowing names, transactions, but then the lights went off:

drifting in       …          and out,            of acoustics;

clefs and trembles; trembles and clefs, and then I was my own creature.       I carved something there on Bleecker; then Macdougal. We left a spark burning on the backbeat, and I felt the reverb; felt the hum all with a lifting of hoods in the cold winter air; then came that heat on the corner                                 and when I say it felt good;                                                                      it felt good.

© Umansky 2011