Rahsaan Roland Kirk Obituary

Edith weeps at your gravestone.

Cheeks and cheeks

Decree a measly start while Tiresias arrives, fresh from Buddy Holly’s plummetings.

The nametags are illegible

I seek monikers in care home sign-in sheets

They yield little more

I asked him for his heart to keep,

Other times I let him sleep.

I wandered with his hand to keep,

Biting knuckles summit, vallied, cracked and casted.

Before I suggest Silverlization

Like luke-warm and slithered, nose-hair-fine and final.

Sideburn king builds bridges but collapses mensa finery— and finally,

Sibyl-bosomed, three brass brassières:

Bells betray the stippled and epistolary fluid leakage.

Swells the crippled decibel, slavery volunteered resounds,

Spirals, swallow-warble…

Swift-bill, blue-backed, yam-chested,

Among the Erins and the Robins.

The fluids are for everyone. I eavesdrop on

Urinal conversations, and taste aviary babies

In pregnant, pollinated April skies.

…

Raise up the record! Let stylus descend,

Let the groove be your sermon, the needle your friend.

Hear the hush turn to gospel, the static to psalm,

The vinyl confesses what silence embalms.

Roland,

Your record speaks and—

Edith weeps.

by Anoushka Felix