Solomon’s Porch
By Philip J. Malebranche
When you look up from your plate of Go Portobello and its
succulent mushrooms, caramelized onions and goat cheese that are
embedded in a warm baguette like a war-of-choice journalist in the
Corps in Anbar Province, the drumsticks are blurring past the sax
fingers trilling. The light in the darkened room bounces off
the red-brick wall onto jazzmen lost behind closed eyes and
dripping beads of sweat. The keyboardist is praying behind his
visor while his fingers dance the entreaty to the sky. Another
piano man, skull-capped, sits-in for a few, and his sound fans out
like that of a muezzin.
Next to him is the bassist, whose time gleams from his left
wrist while the right one slaps at thumping strings. He blocks
the view, though, during the drummer’s solo, to your
dismay. The adjacent congas punctuate the solo and invoke
Africa.
The host, wearing a white Oxford button-down shirt under his
dreadlocks, slips through the smokeless room, like a theater
usher’s flashlight. At the table past your Heineken, a lone
man listens, caressing the leg of the empty chair opposite him with
his foot. To your left, close by, women sit, exchange
pleasantries with you, and enjoy the ladies night out.
Across the room, near the window that gives onto the street,
Stuyvesant Avenue, a woman appears from a sofa, scooping from
somewhere another microphone to join the singer man for a love song
after he breaks rocks on a chain gang for being convicted of a
crime. He’s been convicted of a crime. The trombonist
pokes the air like Earth, Wind and Fire or Kool and the Gang, and
steals a chance to adjust the mic for his horn. Sheet music
drops from the stand in the air conditioner’s breeze. The King
searches for peace and finds it when he plays Happy
Birthday for his own in the audience, and
AutumnLeaves fall. Angelique brings the
check, and Public Assistance puts the money down.
Then you will see Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden
paint.
(August 2008)