LADY DAY
With my muffled response
to the radio contest
of who sings
the blues
“Fine and Mellow”
and “God bless
the Child”
and being one myself
and with the answer
in my hip pocket
expecting to be
a sure winner
with Nat Hentoff as judge
who like me
once went to the Garrison
grammar school
named for the Abolitionist
now on radio station
WMEX in Boston
on the show Jazz Album
I phoned in
but my Aunt Arlene
my baby sitter phoned in
won the contest
before me,
and with a great voice
got the job and platters
at the record store,
yet she promised
to take me
to the Savoy
on Troy Street
where I was on the record
as the youngest patron
who was asked
to play the piano
by the huge burly cat
playing chops
in a cool new coat
yet looking like a suspect
in a Hitchcock thriller,
and here was Lady Day
in black sleeves
and gloves,
with media bourgeois
rumors swirling about
Billie Holiday
that she was out of it
and late
yet she was on time for me
where my adventure
in the blues began.
Hi B.Z Niditch, I am the Poetry Editor for Spare Change News and I’d like to submit to my Editor the poem Lady Day and two others of your choice with a short bio. I have done the same with poet Tara Birch and a few others from the Outlaw Poetry Network. My e-mail is junkietroll@yahoo.com and I have poetry up under the name Marc D. Goldfinger. Thanks for considering this.