"Vanguard" by Eric McHenry, Guest Contest Judge

Vanguard

Eric McHenry

Here’s what I remember: Coleman Hawkins

and I are sitting at a mahogany table

"Low Point" Watercolor on Paper, by J. Artemus Gordon

in the Village Vanguard, quietly talking.

He’s finished a set in which he was unable

to summon even one unbroken tone

from the bell of his once-clarion saxophone.

But now that’s over and he feels all right.

He’s smoking because he’s wanted to all night,

drinking cloudy cognac from a tumbler

and coughing ferociously; his voice is weaker

than his cough; he’s barely audible, mumbling

to me because he knows I’m from Topeka.

He says, “That’s where I learned to tongue my horn.”

I know, and that’s the only thing I hear.

It’s 1969; in half a year

he’ll be dead. In three years I’ll be born.

Poet’s Notes: Coleman Hawkins spent his early teens in Topeka, and in the mid-’90s I became kind of obsessed with finding his house. Eventually, I tried to write a long poem about the search. This was the last section of it and the only one that survived.

Editor’s Note:  A good poet can twist time to his advantage, creating a four-dimensional experience for the reader.  I especially enjoy the way McHenry does that here.  “Vanguard” was first published in American Literary Review.