Issue 3: Lucia Galloway

Getting to Work

The captain mans a joystick, flies a drone.

Through windswept desert, on H 85

he drives an SUV to work 10 miles from home.

In his office-cockpit, he takes the Naugahyde throne.

He studies monitors that show the villagers alive.

The captain mans a joystick, flies a drone.

Vegas glitter and Nevada’s barren stone

recede, along with barbeque and soccer, from the lives

of men who drive to work 10 miles from home.

Almost audible, a cyberspatial moan

that follows “3-2-1, rifle” and a missile’s dive.

The captain mans a joystick, flies a drone.

Crumbs on the kitchen floor, a jangling phone––

he pulls himself away from his domestic hive

for duty in a land 10 miles from home.

He cites rewarding moments helping lone

compatriot ground-crew near Kandahar survive.

The captain mans a joystick, flies a drone.

He drives an SUV to work 10 miles from home.

--Lucia Galloway

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Issue 3: Lucia Galloway

Hosting the Duke at the Cotton Club, circa 1929

Never seen the club so jammed.

Not a dime-size spot out there

on the dance floor.  What a mob!

A real Hades in Harlem!

What’s that?  Ah yes, little gal

at the ring-side table wants

us to play “Going to Town.”

You there in the catbird seat!

Your dress hikes up a tad; you

cross one leg over the knee,

unfold it in the humid

dusk of the sidelines to tease

the toe of your dancing shoe

into the pool of cool light. 

I own the night on this floor

where folks join “The Cotton Club

Stomp.”  Jungle music!  Timid

of their shadows, if you ask

me, an emcee in garters

to hold up his socks while his

tuxedo flashes black, white.

How you people like to do

things, go places, see people!

Marvelous, the way you’ve all

warmed up to our little show!

I do love applause!  Dukie

loves applause, whistles kisses.

So! “First We Freeze, Then We Melt.”

We melt into reflections

in a Macy’s plate-glass pane.

--Lucia Galloway

Note: Material in stanzas 1 and 4 closely follows the emcee’s monologue found in the 78 rpm recording “A Nite at The Cotton Club, Part 2,” Duke Ellington and His Cotton Club Orchestra, RCA Victor, 1929.

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Issue 1: Lucia Galloway

Chinese Mother to Her Son

         There is a farmer who uses his tractor as a village shuttle

        in order to earn enough money to buy meat.

                          

                          --Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2000

I’ll sing you a song, Little One,

while I shake out the comforters

and fold them at the foot of our cots. 

You dig with your stick on the floor near the hearth

where the hard ground gives a little.  Beat upon it––

your drum!

Steam swirls off the porridge pot,

and my breath makes little clouds.

I sing for all of us–you in your padded tunic,

your red cap.  You still have pink cheeks,

my Little Turnip!

I sing husband out the door

as yet again he goes to look at the fields,

frost-hard, for signs of thaw.

Farmer Li drives his tractor, scattering

pigeons.  Exhaust clouds hang above the road

with the smoke of our fires.  From the meat

in his soup, Li’s cheeks grow rounder.  This

and that he hauls.  Brings people to our village

and takes them away.  They pay him money.

Husband says they come to teach us

to plant kale and grow cabbage.

Your father does not own a tractor, Little One.

We have no meat to flavor our broth

with islands of fat.  Our soup is cabbage.

Under its pungent cloud my song grows thinner.

Husband says that farmers must keep planting wheat.

If no one will buy it, we’ll eat it ourselves

and raise pigs and chickens. 

What do we care for kale?

Little One, we will not go hungry.
We will yet have meat in our pot!

--Lucia Galloway




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