Mabel and the Band by John Grey

On a makeshift stage at the back of the bar,
Mabel Starr and her band belted out
the blues of their sharecropper forbears,
infused with a misery all their own.

Pain so energized, the Cajuns
guzzled beer to it and the Creoles
paid in kind with the sweat of sinewy
dance steps in that squeeze of body and brow.

It never felt better than to be reminded
of the bad times, some down so low
they even clapped hands to the accordion,
or ground their bones against the bass.

The guitarist’s busy fingers
belied his lazy look, as he pitched into a solo
that cased the entire fretboard
and laid the strings to waste.

The drummer, in his cocked red hat,
pounded pigskin like a miner
trapped behind a rubble wall,
so hard, so fiercely, he freed himself.

And then there was Mabel, a full-bodied
woman in a sparkling hourglass gown,
hugging the mike to her breast like a lover,
rasping sweet with a voice from before she was born.

A gut’s worth of delivery, nothing withheld,
chest like bellows, swaying back and forth,
in the ring with everything ever done to her
and punching from the throat.



John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink, and Tenth Muse. His latest books, Subject Matters, Between Two Fires, and Covert are available through Amazon. John also has work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories, and Cantos.