Hannah Lowe

If You Believe: Ribs

If you believe I saw Joe Harriott play in 1956

and in my good blue dress, danced all night

in that basement dive below Gerrard Street,

Joe howling through his sax, white shirt

sweat soaked and gleaming in the spotlight,

you may as well believe any of the things

I dream on, listening to his music –

the way he smelt up close say (of cigarettes

and clove) when we took a corner table

at the New Friends on Salmon Lane, gnawing the ribs

he loved and in between chews just talking

to me in that fatherly way he had.

You may as well believe that sometimes

I put his records on and just start crying

and can’t stop crying, don’t even know

what I’m crying for – those decades in history

when men like Joe and my father were shadows

on English streets, or just the way

a melody can get you. I walk the small rooms

of my flat, light spilling through the skylights,

the treetops just in sight through the glass

and even with all these tears, I’m sort of happy.

Richard says be careful what you do in poems

to real people (known people), but surely this poem

shows its seams enough to let me wish

that Joe didn’t start dying so young (at gigs

he couldn’t even stand up straight to play),

that men he used to jam with didn’t see

his broken body shuffling down the streets

and turn away, and those last morphine days,

the dog he saw barking at the window

of the third floor ward really wasn’t there –

well, how could it be, if Joe and me just stepped

from the club into this winter night,

heading arm in arm down Brewer Street

to order steaming bowls of wonton soup?

*

Sax I

That gold horn hung out of you nightly

like a distended tongue – the fix you craved

at The Sunset Club or on The Blue Room’s stage

or the ‘generous’ hours you played

in backroom jams, oh boy, you needed it.

Rajah, Theorist, Sire, the way you saw yourself,

that gold bone stuck out, perked up by hot white girls

on stools who lapped you up, but the sex that night

was solo, Joe, eyes closed, your throat wide open,

walking alone, the gold road to heaven.

*

Sax II

Joe, go down for Beaujolais, or send ‘your woman’ down.

The landlord knows that liquor’s yours.

Now close the door. Now breathe, now drink.

Now lick the reed. Now flick it.

That white girl’s riding buses back across the town.

Put down your cup. Lift up your baby from its velvet snug.

Bellyful of blood, now blow that gold, Joe blow it!

What you play is out the window, out the room.

*

Cherokee

I was playing with fire

      – Bet Lowe

He phoned me up, a party, would I go?

My mum said Joe who’s Joe, a darkie, no!

Not on your nelly, lady, no you won’t you –

Peach lipstick, lacquered beehive, Tweed Mist perfume.

I took the bus and ’course there was no party,

just a room with whiskey glasses on the bedside

and fag ash on the tangled sheets at dawn.

Oh Joe could play an ace – The Akee Blues

and Cherokee, dah da-da deeee dee!

He put his sax in hock to pay the rent,

said Betty can you help me, had a pound

off me on Sunday nights, he had it bad,

he’d not been with another girl in weeks

he said, and no, my mother didn’t sleep

a wink, she sobbed into her mixing bowl!

Then off to Auntie Connie’s caravan,

he wore his suit and wingtips on the dunes,

he said he loved me in the spinning teacups

then vanished in the night. He knew a tune

that bastard arsehole drunk – You’ll Never Know

and Cherokee, dah da-da deeee dee!

And no, I couldn’t bring him home for Christmas,

Not over my dead body, lady, no!

He came with flick-knife smile and lilac bath cubes

and oh she sobbed into her mixing bowl!

My father walked him to the tube, came home

and stank of whiskey, said, he’s just like any

other fella, ain’t he, Betty, ain’t he?

What I Play Is Out the Window!

11 If You Believe: Ribs

12 Sax I

13 Sax II

14 Cherokee

15 Pinewood Suite, unrecorded, 1958

16 Quintet at a Party, 1960

17 Song for Shake

19 Partita, 1968

20 What Is and Isn’t Jazz?

22 If You Believe: Old Paradise Street

23 Ethology

24 Mingus

25 Alpha Boy

26 All the Bodies in the Foreign Ground, 5000 Miles from Home

27 Coda

28 If You Believe: One Pale Eye

Ormonde

31 Ormonde

32 What I Know

34 Passieras

35 Boxer

36 Dressmaker

37 Schoolboy

38 Gloves

39 Distressed British Seamen

40 Stowaway

41 Johnny Cakes – A Recipe

42 In

43 Ship-breaking

44 Mishra’s Blues

Borderliner

49 My Father’s Notebook

51 Ran Away, My Mulatto Boy

52 Topsy, Turvy

53 Out of Many

54 Borderliner

55 Scott Joplin Rag

56 Note by Note

57 Mitchell/Mingus

58 Genealogy

59 High Yellow

60 Honey

61 Brown Eyes Blue

62 Yellow River, Milk River

63 Fifty Words of English

64 Eleven O’Clock Child

65 What Charlie Said

66 What Do I Remember of Sofia?

67 If You Believe: In the Smoke and the Light

68 Old Daisy-face

70 Notes on the poems

‘Here is a poet with a commanding style; her voice is entirely her own, both rich and laconic. These are poems springing from the page with vitality, rue and insight. Her elegies are restrained and devastating. An extraordinary debut.’ – Penelope Shuttle on Chick

‘This is an outstanding, unputdownable first collection.’ – John Glenday on Chick

‘An unforgettable book. In an age where blurby superlatives compete on debut book covers, this one has an edge: it is about someone, namely the poet’s late father, from whose name it takes its title… “Say”, which exploits understatement to the full, is remarkable, and heartbreaking’ – Helena Nelson, Magma, on Chick

‘Hannah Lowe’s debut collection is wonderful… a book which deals plainly and honestly with big emotions and tender, dramatic personal scenes’ – Declan Ryan, Ambit, on Chick