Like a Girl Saying Yes* (for Bix Biederbecke)
by John Menaghan
You fingered the thing
all wrong, couldn't read
a note. Yet anything
they played, you gave
right back, but twice
as sweet. Repeat, repeat.
Brass phrases slipping
through that horn of
plenty, out of step,
one step ahead.
The cornet shone each
time it met your
lips under the lights.
Possessed by harmonies
no one had heard
you played all night,
the boy from Davenport
they all called Bix.
Why Louis said
the name itself
alone made one
stand up, the very
word. Your lustre
came from where?
No man could guess.
Inventing phrases,
speaking not a word,
sweet cornet like
a woman saying Yes.
*Eddie Condon's description of Bix's sound, circa 1922
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