Manabout

Manabout struts to the gate,
hollers the entrance code,
then leans into the car’s window
to bum a smoke.

“It’s all good, it’s all good,”
he says with the in-your-face audacity
of one who puckered pale lips
to usher trumpet blasts
bent in call response
between doomsday
and Bitches Brew.

The birth of cool
clasped in honeysuckle,
tar, moonshine and voodoo drums.

He guards the fence,
ponders on coyotes,
golf lanes and the cop car
gliding through every other hour,
so the kid can deal under the trees.

Cause once in a lifetime
comes in pill and powder form
and so many want to buy oil
from a snake
slow and heavy
to languish in a faraway sun.

And Manabout follows
his own groove caravan
in a fluid midnight loose
and starless,
wide strides
of a flailing boxer,
dark language
damp with ashes
over silenced sirens
and the gut-bucket ache
premonition of fire
to his left,
mud and sweat
to his right.

“It’s all good, it’s all good,” he says.

Anabell Donovan (Anna Eusthacia) is a psychologist and educator dedicated to student success of minorities and under-represented individuals in higher education. She loves words and would always like to “start where language ends.”