Green Linden Press

Notes on the Bones —Erika Brumett

 
In Cold War U.S.S.R., censored music was bootlegged 
and played on used x-rays.

Big band, pop, bebop:
banned. Too sensual:
mambo and rumba, 
samba and tango.  
Satchmo, Fats: contra-

band. So smugglers dug 
through hospital dumpsters,
stamped grooves into radio-
graphs instead: Boogie-
woogie, Funk, Dixie-

land. Duke on a skull. Dizzy
Gillespie on a TB
scan, on somebody’s uncle
Sergei—spinning around
and around—his ribs

curved, spectral, a cage 
for tubercles and sound.  
Stilyagi traced plates 
to make record shapes, 
burned spindle holes

with hand-rolled smokes, sold
x-rays like dope in dark
cafes, alleyways. Music
patrols roamed in packs. 
Ears perked, they raided 

homes. Could they have known
how tempo thrums through
marrow, how rhythm 
stows away in bone? 
The Iron Curtain 

closed, as Russian folk-
songs hummed from sternums.  
As Lady Day sang in refrain
from scapulae, No, no, you can’t
take that away from me.

Erika Brumett’s words appear in numerous publications, including The Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Five Points. She is the winner of RHINO’s 2018 Editor's Prize.  Erika’s novel, Scrap Metal Sky, was published by Shape&Nature Press, and her chapbook, bonehouse, was released last year from Green Linden Press.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2019