Blues Franchise

Line from a letter, “Blues Franchise.” I believe it is a motif language rather than thought—intimately

Blues as art as theme as exhibition

Up on a midtown metropolis edifice

Billboard façade 50 feet tall thirty feet wide: BLUE SMOKE

Of a black femme-like face framed by her fingers tapered upward in the V of her palms

Looking off, her eyes below her painted on eyebrows

And Caucasoid wig solid black

touching off of a violet plunging deeper into the decorated pigment

A frame furls hints of blue in a spectral geometry

Framing tightly the face, reposed

A white strap over one deep ochre shoulder as background

 
Could be trans-shim or a delightful Caledonia,

red skein of a lipstick kiss imprinted invisibly in a nano dimension

 
Replications across the marquees of legions of subway cars

Her face on the mini billboard above the seat next to

The moving doors

Always looking somewhere else as the

Masses travel to all destinations

Blues smoke surrounding whatever stage as forum

For the franchise

Forever after for as far as the past goes.

 
Entering the negative space of a corporate behemoth

A lobby of the skyscraper museum or loft like enclosures

interlocking directorates of high art residencies.

 
Consumer beware of what you purchase with your eyes,

The presence of your body

 
                                              *

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

And into the blues

You

Out of the blue

You

Out of the blue

Vanish into the blue

you

Copyright © 2024 by David Henderson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 19, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.