Slippery Sax

"Crystal White Detergent"
	-- that's mine.
		'That's nice', he blew, no words.
	You knew just what he said,
		with that two-note thing,
		biting hard,
		filling cheeks,
			screaming
		tearful logic,
		love, much chaos:
'Pale wrist submerged'.
	'Beat that', he blew,
		and I, with
uncharacteristic hesitation,
	I ...groped, my
halleluahs submerged
	in
reverent suds
		in
	detergent discovered
		on a mental counter.
	One last challenge,
		he blew again:
'I cannot do this, cannot cannot Kana...'
		...who tail-waggled in,
		knowing her wordless name,
	tootled in puddly notes lazing low
		around his feet.
	She lapped up sounds and
		loosed me,
			forgotten --
	I was no man again, and
		he won,
			no words
	against my slippery syllables.

-- Eric Kofoid & Kelly Sullivan

1 thought on “Slippery Sax

  1. This poem takes me back. It was written at a poetry reading at my grandparents John and Edith Syper’s house back in 1993. Kelly Sullivan my first swimming teacher composed music to go with the poem and my dad wrote the slippery sax.

    I still remember Kelly from my very young years. He was the one who first introduced me to swimming and led me to develop a life long passion for it.

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