by K.G. Ricci
Mississippi Saxophone
Harmonica is the wrong word for these ten holes/
twenty notes that can suck your tongue,
swallow your breath and drown you.
It’s a tin sandwich, polysyllabic, rhymes with Veronica
who dumped you. It needs the chaw-chaw noise
of a saw that cuts across wood grain, a syllable
that spits. It needs the double o, hoot-hoot
of a train entering a town warning kids
to get off the tracks, it can’t slow down. Add in
a z that buzzes the fuzz-buzz tone for the groan
of a man who’s left home and forgot the biscuit
on the counter and he’s hungry. And where is the vowel
that howls, that scowls after your woman has left you,
a voice down in your bowels, nothing tremolo
but a great horned owl that grinds and growls,
something brawny and raw—an ah sound with the x
of an axe. It cuts. It scratches. It flashes across the air
before you begin to suck and blow.
John Davis is a polio survivor and the author of Gigs and The Reservist. His work has appeared recently in DMQ Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Terrain.org. He lives on an island in the Salish Sea.
K.G. Ricci is a self-taught NYC artist who has been creating collages for the past seven years. In that time his work has evolved from the larger 24×48 panels to 7×10 books and most recently to a series of 18×24 collages on cardboard titled Incongruities. His work has been in gallery exhibitions throughout the country, and he has appeared in numerous on-line exhibitions. Many of Ken’s most recent “visual stories” have been featured in several literary magazines. Instagram @kennethricci.