I flipped the footstool on its side:
the throne my father used
to ease his scuffed heels,

his shoes black with gospel.
My only father, leaning back
from the weight of his aches

into the saxophone, the gold,
corked question mark he tasted
more than his wife, nights

I glanced from the bedroom &
caught the shadow of his
wrestle with his music

thinking then, the tongue
as something to be improved
with salt, that teeth & jaw

would always carry a vacancy,
that teeth, jaw, & jazz
mix in the mouth like an alloy,

like a breath that doesn’t end
with sound is a failed form
of begging. There I was, angled

by the mattress, holding a wooden kiss
by its legs, my mother coming
up from the kitchen to see her

son’s voice piped with furniture,
lips pressed around it as if I knew
something about love she didn’t,

it was a secret between the dark
of my mouth & the lint
lifted from the base, everything

picked from a floor is devotion,
which is why my mother never
scolded me for taking in this small

earth, sour nectar of oak that
in the midnight hours would be
blessed by a crawl of spiders or

worse, sniffed around by a mouse,
no, she never yanked me away
while I was doing my work,

cheeks splintering with a soft
noise, a brown genre; dirt
in my spit, a man in my chest.