Ephraim Scott Sommers
Partisan War Party for Mahalia Jackson
- “We’re gonna sing and never get tired!”
If a bomb in a dirty backpack is,
or a beatdown, or a church-burning,
then a praise song, too, in which someone
in this world is certain of something,
is a political act, and look how mighty
she carries it, Mr. Officer, and carries on
coming on over despite the history
of harmonicas, cotton and rope, the bayou
cud heavy in her country’s blood.
Look how not only in the mailman
hunching down a hundred and first
can we see the burden of words
made visible in hundred degree heat,
but also in Mahalia Jackson rolling
a mountaintop into the thin refrain
with her two perfectly open hands,
and only when she slaps them together―
the one that kills and the one that soothes―
can I hear somewhere fifty miles
beneath the valley floor of the shadow
of my gut the two hands happening
at the same damn time, the liquid
I’d buried there Coltrane-ing
to the surface, and she’s standing
me up, and she’s yanking open
my body, and she’s calling out
the volcano as impossible as belief.
A singer and guitar player, Ephraim Scott Sommers has performed music on flatbed trailers, in cafes, bars, strip clubs and cantinas on three different continents. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Cream City Review, Harpur Palate, The Journal, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Verse Daily, Word Riot, and elsewhere. Ephraim currently teaches creative writing while a PhD candidate at Western Michigan University. For music and poems, please visit www.reverbnation.com/ephraimscottsommers.
Return to November 2015 Edition
- “We’re gonna sing and never get tired!”
If a bomb in a dirty backpack is,
or a beatdown, or a church-burning,
then a praise song, too, in which someone
in this world is certain of something,
is a political act, and look how mighty
she carries it, Mr. Officer, and carries on
coming on over despite the history
of harmonicas, cotton and rope, the bayou
cud heavy in her country’s blood.
Look how not only in the mailman
hunching down a hundred and first
can we see the burden of words
made visible in hundred degree heat,
but also in Mahalia Jackson rolling
a mountaintop into the thin refrain
with her two perfectly open hands,
and only when she slaps them together―
the one that kills and the one that soothes―
can I hear somewhere fifty miles
beneath the valley floor of the shadow
of my gut the two hands happening
at the same damn time, the liquid
I’d buried there Coltrane-ing
to the surface, and she’s standing
me up, and she’s yanking open
my body, and she’s calling out
the volcano as impossible as belief.
A singer and guitar player, Ephraim Scott Sommers has performed music on flatbed trailers, in cafes, bars, strip clubs and cantinas on three different continents. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Cream City Review, Harpur Palate, The Journal, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Verse Daily, Word Riot, and elsewhere. Ephraim currently teaches creative writing while a PhD candidate at Western Michigan University. For music and poems, please visit www.reverbnation.com/ephraimscottsommers.
Return to November 2015 Edition