Kim Addonizio

Cigar Box Banjo

Blind Willie Johnson could coax

music from a single string.  God plucked a rib

and found a woman.  Concert aria

in the gypsy song, long groan

of orgasm in the first kiss, plastic bag

of heroin ripening in the poppy fields.

Right now, in a deep pocket of a politician’s brain,

a bad idea is traveling along an axon

to make sure the future resembles a cobra

rather than an ocarina.

Still there’s hope in every cartoon bib

above which a tiny unfinished skull in

its beneficence dispenses a drooling grin.

The heart may be a trashy organ,

but when it plucks its shiny banjo

I see blue wings in the rain.

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NOTE:

"Cigar Box Banjo" is reprinted from My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits, Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014

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