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 Phoebe’s Blues
 
I wish I were a willow, a lover, a mountain or a soft refrain,
But I’d hate to be a grown-up and have to try to bear my life in pain.
 
Harpo’s Blues
Phoebe Snow, July 17, 1950 - April 26, 2011


I was sixteen, hanging around the singer
up the street. Late in the day, she emerged
from the dark musky bedroom,  stepped over
 
the clothes on the floor, the overflowing ashtrays,  
the guitar leaning against the wall.  
As I sat in her kitchen, watching her eat
 
breakfast at three, cream cheese on a bagel,
she said, “We call this scream cheese;” I asked,
“Does someone scream when you eat it?” 
 
“You’re a weird kid,” she said, meant it
as a complement. When my boyfriend broke
my heart, she played me an album of Lady Day;
 
and my small sadness took refuge in that
voice of tears, that bottomless wail,
found comfort in the absolute certainty
 
that love always leads to pain. 
With her frizzy hair and chunky build, Phoebe
was an outsider in 1973 but oh, her voice, 
 
how it rasped low as cigarettes
then crooned  motherly as a lullaby then shot up  
like a jagged lighting bolt that split the sky.  


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Published by Algebra of Owls 2016