-after Roy Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
At 7, parents swam you into the US.
At 18, masked agents snatch
you while driving to volleyball practice,
throw you into a room,
squalling room, with 25 older men,
whale room, entombed together.
Leader of an all-white navy band,
Coltrane played for thousands,
who carried the dead
in mangled bubbles in their heads.
Notes climbed like tides,
he serenaded the sandy
remains of fallen rock.
But he was billed as just
a guest performer,
as if a bush elephant,
largest land animal on earth—
standing on stage, unseen.
Metal blanket, no washing,
foul smells. You cannot breathe.
Music oozed out of his invisibility,
which those days was everyone’s invisibility
in the regime that strangled Blackness.
He became a citizen of dead zones,
sailing in mid-air on night’s trapeze,
going dark, pleasuring
with poppy flowers and rhapsody
until the nameless angel tested him,
commanded crazed clouds
to unleash cyclones of nausea,
ripping skin off trance.
He lay wounded, raw,
no melodies for cover.
After 6 days, you are released.
25 days to your graduation.
14 days to your deportation hearing.
Sleeping whale, unstill,
an eye always circles
in sniper-like vigilance.
One evening, he rose,
returned to the club, raised his horn.
From every gateway in his body
song escaped like the purging
of volcano vents,
solos firing, beyond will
beyond wind,
hear him—
weaving around power,
desire . . .
through obstacles,
wiggling at the tops of mind
everything is there
how it opens you up
to fighting—
in a sonic way.
Author’s Note: This is an imagined connection between a persecuted young immigrant in today’s America and a member of the victimized Black community of an earlier era, namely, jazz great, John Coltrane.