This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Genevieve Pfeiffer, is from Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young, released by Alan Squire Publishing in 2020.
Interval
You say that “interval”
means the space between
our two notes, structure
of a chord in a tune
by Monk: you think in jazz.
Your heartbeats riff, solo, jam.
You seek syncopation,
seek collaboration,
seek concatenation.
“Emotion” and “flow”
are your middle names.
Your last life, you sat in once
with Mingus, felt him
lay down that groove,
your hands, lips, whole body
poised to pass it on.
“I’m a sensual man,”
you say to me as you stroke
my keys, pluck
my catgut strings, blow
Coltrane through my bones.
Katherine E. Young is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Woman Drinking Absinthe, Day of the Border Guards (2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize finalist), and two chapbooks. She is the editor of Written in Arlington and curator of Spoken in Arlington. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, Subtropics, and many others. She is the translator of Look at Him by Anna Starobinets, Farewell, Aylis and Stone Dreams by Azerbaijani political prisoner Akram Aylisli, and two poetry collections by Inna Kabysh. From 2016-2018, she served as the inaugural poet laureate for Arlington, Virginia.
