Dayna C's musical ekphrastics, titled "27," take up the lives, music, and loss of three famous rock and rollers who died at the age of 27--Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin/. She compresses narrative, music, and humor into the poems. Here are two of them. (I would've included youtube cuts, but the site seems to be down at the moment).
I. Hendrix
parks outside
the Samarkand
in a stolen car,
his unsupported
neck and head bent
like a broken guitar
strung like sinews
lolling. Dead
strains evict
the psychedelic
notes squatting
in his brain.
Fourth floor,
his undergrad
rolls with the earth
and space of a place
where they picked
young when God asked.
Real bad, I need
Jimi real bad.
What the wind
doesn’t cry
is any name
she recognizes.
Jimi drives by
in a Cadillac
with no license plates.
III. Joplin
She hit the good minutes
early and all at once. She’d quit
but lunch, milk and apple,
hadn’t fixed the craving
edging at her lungs.
Even a cigarette at this point
or the calculations of a hand
that held the hem above her
knees –the man who dealt
methamphetamines in Memphis,
where the crowd prayed she’d
make it, at least through Summertime.
They didn’t guess her sexy grit
was got by getting too much
before the inner gem could adjust,
facets gleaming back in her throat,
and had rusted over by the time
she went to sing that slinky
parting shot of a note.
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