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lyrics

NIGHT OF THE LIVING BLUES

She’s savvy and slender. Her mama says she’s sassy. Her papa says she’s a sip of wine. Her preacher proclaims she’s bathtub hooch making all the praying men go blind. She’s the subject of every hush and hiss spewing from pursed lips dribbling over countertops, bars, and bone-China tea sets.

Blue-haired-horn-rimmed-glasses gab on about her seven children and the six or seven fathers that go along with them. The cops have tried to link her to three murders, and every burned-out house has her name written in its ashes.

Does she believe in God? Whom does she love? The town folk know of course, Jeremiah Earl, her brother, who went dull after he was kicked in the noggin by a horse. Way back when they were children, she ass-whipped every boy who called her brother something less than human.

Now she works two jobs waiting tables so he won’t end up locked up in some mental institution. Each beau she brings home tries to convince her to have her brother committed.

Each mac she drags back ends up sideswiped by a skillet. And tonight, like every night’s a good night to go on living. It’s good weather for a low-cut summer dress and cowgirl boots cut from red leather. It’s a fine time to shove a lime in a bottle of Corona under a porch light with the town’s new tow truck driver. She knows the brightness a bit of loneliness can inspire.

The moon’s nothing but dust and rocks, but it’s still luminous when he leans in to kiss her. She slides one hand up the heat of his thigh. The other behind her back, fists a knife.

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from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems, released February 26, 2023

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Joshua Michael Stewart Massachusetts

Joshua Michael Stewart is a poet and musician living in Western Massachusetts.

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