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Book Synopsis"Vibrant with the intensity of blues singers."-Feminist Bookstore News "Patricia Spears Jones is cosmopolitan blues goddess alive on the wind stream of transnational homemade intimate gossip. Her poems are a highly effective antidote to living in a country where caring seems to have been placed on the Endangered Activities list."-David Rivard "Patricia Spears Jones reminds me of those wisecracking, foolproof women in the old films she so lovingly dissects-the ones whose deadsure, replenishing humor and never-fail good sense causes the audience to sit up and clap."-Cyrus Cassells "She has given us a world where music and brains are allowed to co-exist with instinct, where the lyric and the literal may dwell without eyeing the other with suspicion."-Cornelius Eady From "The Perfect Lipstick": It is why I appreciate my favorite shade of lipstick: Sherry Velour. Sounds like the name of a drag queen from the early seventies. One of those strapping Black men who had enough of playing macho, put their feet in five-inch heels and made saints of Dinah Washington, Rita Hayworth and a very young Nina Simone. So, on goes this lipstick. Pretty for parties. Fatal for festivals. Sherry Velour and her hot discoveries: light above the fog, a toy ship. Black men in sequined dresses and the click of new words in the new world where the most dangerous of dreams come true. Patricia Spears Jones was named by Essence.com as one of its "40 Poets [They] Love" in 2010.
Table of ContentsA LUCENT FIRE By Patricia Spears Jones TABLE OF CONTENTS Early Poems Wearing My Red Silk Chinese Jacket Spanish Lesson Mythologizing Always: Seven Sonnets Sonnet 1 Sonnet 2 Sonnet 3 Sonnet 4 Sonnet 5 Sonnet 6 Sonnet 7 (Change of Season or the Break –up Sonnet) Poems from The Weather That Kills The Birth of Rhythm and Blues In Like Paradise/Out Like the Blues Encounter and Farewell If I Were Rita Hayworth The Usual Suspect San Francisco, Spring 1986 Baby Hair Shirt Glad All Over The Perfect Lipstick Sly & the Family Stone under The Big Tit/Atlanta, 1973 5:25 a.m. Measure What the Gods of Fire Charged Me New Blues From Femme du Monde Hope, Arkansas, 1970 Ghosts Commes des garcons Sapphire Shack with Vines Why I Left the Country: A Suite: The Suburban Dream A Gallant History The City Proper The Village Sparkles Saltimbanque All Saints Day My Matthew Shepard Poem Laura Hud April 1994-Two Deaths, Two Wakes, Two Open Caskets Ron Vawter April 1994-Two Deaths, Two Wakes, Two Open Caskets: Lynda Hull Femme du monde From Painkiller Painkiller What the First Cities Were All About Spring Snow All Saints Day, 2001 Shimmer My Movie Waiting for the Year of the Horse Son Cubano Pump Trabajan la sal y azucar What I Have Not Done for Love Failed Ghazal Notes for the Poem, “Beloved of God” How He Knows Me Aubade Blue Saturday A Lost Key My Angel #1 My Angel #2 Last Day of Passover, April 2006 From Repuestas Hay algo mas triste en el mundo Y cuando se muda el paisaje Murion tal vez de verguenza estos trens From Swimming to America Beuys and the Blonde Swimming to America A Tale of Morandi Kara Walker Draws the Blues After South Pacific Mary J. Blige sings “No One Will Do” A City in Heaven Dream Book Borges Dream, 4:35 a.m. From Living in the Love Economy Living Room Life Lessons Love Come & Go (The George Hunt Painting) February Thaw Pull Up Pants Second Person Hurting Living in the Love Economy Subsequent to Thomas Sayers Ellis Day After May Day Family Ties The Fringe of Town Facebook Profile Moment (God) in Chinese King Pleasure Meets the Philosopher Back to School Indian Summer NEW AND UNCOLLECTED ETTA JAMES AT THE AUDOBON BALLROOM Self- Portrait as Shop Window Self- Portrait as Midnight Storm Sylvia Plath: Three Poems Last Seen Wearing Sylvia Plath, Office Worker The Talk-Show Producer Keeps Calling What Beauty Does Arsenal Ermine Fop Fats Domino sings “I am walking to New Orleans” Fatboy Slim intones “big bright yellow sun” Randy Crawford sings “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”/January 14, 2007 Aretha Franklin sings “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” Kurt Cobain sings “In the Pines” ‘what the Fates allow’ Wearing Mr. Song Dinner with the ghost of Lorenzo Thomas Nothing is planned Stroking the pigeon (after the film Amour) Occasioned by Akilah Oliver From The Brooklyn Song Bob at 29/Back in Rome Broken embraces, broken wings Patato y Totico play “Ya Yo E” The Land of Fog and Poetry
