Daniel’s Response to Jet, or Why Do You Trust Her?
Written in Daniel’s voice, when asked why he trusts Heca and the unborn baby with special powers
Who would believe we both framed and hung Bearden’s “Jammin’ at the Savoy” on our separate walls long before we even met?? The mostly primary colors exploding as jazz men work carbon fingers to the bone, frenzied beyond language and no one looks up, no conductor needed, because they’re wrapped in the kind of duende Lorca speaks of—an avalanche of quarters and eighths that coalesce into a groove we both comprehend (since maybe she’s the trumpet and I’m the piano, or maybe she’s the guitar strings and I’m the trumpet sending notes back up into the sky hoping Gabriel will hear), but either way the sun-like orb gleams down and considering we both believed in this stronger than the balm of psalms said on our wedding day, I’ll keep my faith in her, in us, and in Bearden’s cobalt steady bluein’.
Copyright © 2026 by Celeste Doaks. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 14, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Because words make sounds, sounds resonate within people and the narrators of poems. This poem attempts to wrap a vulnerable confession within call and response—a technique very familiar to jazz musicians and [the] characters of this poem, Daniel and Jet. For male-identified persons, who sometimes hide their hearts behind art or sports, admitting that a shared painting gave him trust in his female-identified counterpart is a miraculous feat. Here, wrapped in the African American tradition of antiphonal form, secrets are sung about a man and his decision to trust.”
—Celeste Doaks
celeste doaks
