person Sarah Law, one poem

Sarah Law lives in London, UK, and is a tutor for the Open University and elsewhere. She has five poetry collections and is widely published online. Her pamphlet My Converted Father, is published by Broken Sleep Books. She edits the online journal Amethyst Review.

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Jazz with Diana

Is a shifting mood of chords
              is dry ice evoking the smoke
                            of a joint in twenties Manhattan,

by night, by streetwise starlight. Is
              a touch of freeform syncopation,
                            the old heart has quavered lately,
(still within the limits of its listening).

Is Miss Lonely Heart, sat at the bar
              with her legs crossed and her hands
                            turning the glass of gimlet in

the low keyed evening, she
              makes such a picture there, that he
                            remembers her silhouette ten years on,

the angle of her limbs and the sheen
              of her blouse, and ambition’s
                            hazy scent. How its neat strength

becomes a sort of anodyne, a
              riff on youth from those too aged
                            or wealthy to recall its rougher cuts,

now the stage lights mimic the sky
              and even the floor is sprinkled with
                            what’s fallen. She’s at a grand piano,

letting the dream songs melt –
              some are more borrowed than blue,
                            and settle like mist on a face, flung dew

as her head lifts up and fair hair
              traces a verse for the parched;
                            even from this distance I can hear

time swinging, from the very last place
              you look, as our hands are joined.

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