​Coltrane on a Friday Night, by Christine Jackson

​Coltrane on a Friday Night

Bone brittle
from battling the week,
I disarm the alarm
inside our penthouse door.
I glance at the dish
where you keep your keys to the beamer.
Still empty.
 
A glass of wine
releases cool shades of Coltrane.
Collapsed on one of our sofas,
I stare at this space,
leather rectangles arranged
for mock cocktail conversation.
 
Brushed cymbals scrape
a useless circle,
like the cut-rate merlot
swirling dry and metallic on my tongue.
Drums stutter-start,
the bass pulsing
beats from a dying heart
alone at twilight.
 
This apartment used to gleam.
Now the sleek furniture
reeks of stale ambition.
Faux modernism in red and black
lines the walls,
framed spatters of blood and death.
 
The pleading tenor sax tosses
longing through the window
of the million dollar view.
A circuit board of winking lights
ends at the shore,
where electric life
fizzles into the ocean.
 
Along the horizon,
a distant cargo ship passes,
low in the water.
I follow its lit outline,
as the weighted vessel carries, unaware,
my stinging blues of darkness
singing blind despair.

Christine Jackson

Christine Jackson grew up in New England as a swamp Yankee.  She now lives at the edge of the Everglades and teaches literature and creative writing at a South Florida university.  That is, she is supposed to teach, but she probably learns as much from her students as they do from her.  Chris’s poetry has been published in several online publications, including Verse-Virtual, Treehouse Arts, Peacock Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review.