Blues Franchise

David Henderson

       ^{Line from a letter, “Blues Franchise.” I believe it is a motif}

       ^{language rather than thought—intimately}

Blues as art as theme as exhibition

Up on a midtown metropolis edifice

Billboard façade 50 feet tall thirty feet wide: BLUE SMOKE

Of a black femme-like face framed by her fingers tapered upward in the V of her palms

Looking off, her eyes below her painted on eyebrows

And Caucasoid wig solid black

touching off of a violet plunging deeper into the decorated pigment

A frame furls hints of blue in a spectral geometry

Framing tightly the face, reposed

A white strap over one deep ochre shoulder as background

 
Could be trans-shim or a delightful Caledonia,

red skein of a lipstick kiss imprinted invisibly in a nano dimension

Replications across the marquees of legions of subway cars

Her face on the mini billboard above the seat next to

The moving doors

Always looking somewhere else as the

Masses travel to all destinations

Blues smoke surrounding whatever stage as forum

For the franchise

Forever after for as far as the past goes.

Entering the negative space of a corporate behemoth

A lobby of the skyscraper museum or loft like enclosures

interlocking directorates of high art residencies.

Consumer beware of what you purchase with your eyes,

The presence of your body

                                              *

Out of the Blue

 
You

Out of the blue

And into the blues

You

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

Vanish into the blue

you

Copyright © 2024 by David Henderson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 19, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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about this poem

“Henderson’s poem is like a Juan Gris painting. David holds up an instance of urban reality. As he rides the subway, he follows gestures. Images and actions slide down and crumble in front of us like a Thelonious Monk piano solo. The poem becomes music in your hands. In his persona, David is singing one tune after another. Walking down the street, he spontaneously doo-wops. As fellow poet LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka] said of him, ‘David Henderson is the world echo, with the strength and, if you are conscious, beauty of the place tone.’ And his language of love is his poetry, which plucks like Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. This blues, this sound of the sky, is felt in the last words of the poem. The blues enters and becomes Blues people kissing the sky.”
—Victor Hernández Cruz

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this month’s guest editor

Thanks to Victor Hernández Cruz, author of Beneath the Spanish (Coffee House Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Hernández Cruz’s curatorial approach and find out more about our Guest Editors for the year.

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