David Winter
White Queen’s Blues
Mr. Pat Water’s Very Smart Club My-O-My, known for its “female impersonators,” permitted only white patrons and performers for most of its history.
If I could dance
to your work song, hummed
as sun splits
shadow from silt
each morning, I’d have
the whole quarter
swooning.
But a lady mustn’t soil her lace,
so I dance
under stage lights
far from Bourbon, and I beg:
let me
drink color
like a peahen, Daddy,
let me swallow
music from dented
horns. I beg:
take me
through the darkened city,
Daddy, take me
to the city
of seen dawn—
Take me, not because
the blue note
in your black skin
has sung softly
in my ear—
though
it has. And not because
you don’t dream well
beneath roach-
flight, though you don’t.
Take me,
Daddy,
take me—to the city’s
throat,
where I know
my skin newly
as the crescent
moon
by your hand pressed
against it.
David Winter wrote the poetry chapbook Safe House (Thrush Press, 2013). His poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Four Way Review, Forklift, Ohio, Harpur Palate, Meridian, Muzzle, and Ninth Letter. He recently received his MFA in Creative Writing from The Ohio State University, where he currently serves as a poetry editor for The Journal. He has also worked extensively with the Literacy Narratives of Black Columbus Project to document the writing and lives of African-American poets.
