In celebration of National Poetry Month, we are delighted to share three jazz triptychs from Indigo Moor’s Reconstructing Eden, published by CavanKerry Press, along with an explanation of jazz triptychs from the author. CavanKerry Press is distributed by the University of Chicago Press.
Jazz Triptych
A lyric–poetic form in which each movement is told in three “panels” (or poems) of differing forms. Each three-part section provides different sides of the same theme or argument. In this book, each triptych is formed by:
a. Tercet
b. Bastard Villanelle
c. Rhyme Royal
Bastard Villanelle is my own creation, containing a rhyme scheme of aba, cbc, dbd, ebe, fbf, abab. Only the Bastard b remains sacred in its rhyme. My Bastard form “riffs” between two old, set forms. A fitting voice to harness the struggle to unearth myself.
Forgotten
The song “Unforgettable” hangs like incense
in the clubs you frequent. Nat King Cole’s
liquid baritone beats nightly at our expense.
My Personal Man-o’-war
My father runs, breaking wind-sweeps in broken light.
He runs like a Black man is supposed to from children.
He runs like a beaten man runs from a seeping life.
My uncle laughs: your daddy runs from you no matter how old.
He runs like an octopus striving for the wake’s beginning.
Half-awake, I dream he runs like a cheetah, chest-achingly bold.
My father runs like a dog, steel-toed, kicked in his ribs.
He runs like a horse leaping concertina for stolen citron.
He runs through bones like ghosts haunting abandoned cribs.
He runs, a gambler ignoring a leg-breaker’s fist at the door.
Never hearing the questions caught in my throat like a rebellion
of bees battling for supremacy over all the fatherless Moors.
My father runs like a man spying Death in a clouded mirror.
He runs past his own image in a whiskey pavilion,
traipsed by wisteria hanging dank like forgotten cheers.
My father runs into a grave like all martyrs to their own might.
Without sound or fury, beneath an autumn sky, bitten
cold. An anvil, frozen to an iceberg in a splintered night,
where he rises like Christ Almighty. All his sins forgiven.
My Son in the Mirror
from my father
I gifted you a face sculpted for angels
to hide sins behind smiling masks.
I left you gin and cards, strangers
to melt in tin pots to build flasks.
I had my own image to bask
behind. Secret berries on your lips.
Every morning, you’re: a growing eclipse.
Indigo Moor is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Sacramento. His books include Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, Through the Stonecutter’s Window, Tap-Root, and In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers. Moor taught as visiting faculty for Dominican University’s MFA program.
Reconstructing Eden is available now from our website. Use the code UCPNEW to save 30% when you order from us directly.