Stevie Wonder boulevard
By Tamar Ashdot
“Stevie Wonder boulevard” by Tamar Ashdot is the first runner-up of the 2024 Rising Poet Prize for emerging poets, selected by Morgan Parker. We’re honored to share this musical poem with you.
for Robert Laidler
this is about Aretha. on the corner of Stevie Wonder and
woodward. it’s about the way grass lives below concrete.
the way flowers still peek through the cracks. like Kendrick
once said, if i told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would
you trust it? i think i would because sometimes there is no
access to true sun and we do our best, finding
its shadows on white bricks of the courtyard corridor
on flatbush avenue. sometimes we go days without seeing
sun in the pandemic. we lean our bodies over the fire
escape trying to catch a glimpse. to see a flower in bloom
means the flower survived the darkness. to write about love
without sight is to create light in a world where there is
none. we propagate our stems in the brooklyn kitchen. little
veiny roots shake in the truck as we drive across
pennsylvania. we reach michigan. blue sky is everywhere.
which means sun and grass and not much concrete.
we watch dandelions go from yellow to wispy air swept
wishes. i try to adjust to the silence. on woodward
avenue everything sounds a bit like jazz standards, especially
the woman named Miracle who reminds me of another
woman named Haven who sold me my imac and a visual
artist whose father changed their family name to Poem. my
father changed our family name to waterfalls. i think i will
change it again. if i could do it over, i would name myself
art & truth & music. every week i drive on Aretha’s road.
i bring her songs to the classroom and ask my students
what they hear. they tell me about respect
and blackness and passion. how all music feels like purple.
how some of the best came from this city. it’s a memorial
highway but Aretha is here with us. in amethyst royalty.
on Stevie wonder boulevard, there is a West African
restaurant. music spills out of a storefront across the street.
the space is filled with sienna subway tiled walls and sugars
in glass jars. a woman with the reddest lipstick, the reddest
glasses, the fiercest beauty, sways to sounds the speakers
make. she is in black and white polka dot.
we are dancing and drinking lemonade, dreaming
in lemonade, we are in lemonade dreamland.
i am inside the heart of where suffering meets joy,
the sublimation. when i was eighteen, i sang the soprano
solo of Duke Ellington’s a concert of sacred music with my
school’s gospel chorus. it would be the only time i sang
on stage. in the sterile rehearsal room, our voices
were sledgehammers. full-bellied and unapologetic, we sang
major thirds like they were the most beautiful seventh
chords. we sang it simple and we sang it strong.
the day a teacher said nazis should have killed me
i skipped every class but gospel chorus. there was nothing
to fear there. we were rehearsing i trust you. the alto line
was low and rich and close to the ground. i’ll never forget
the way i yelled and cried. when i call you, you’ll answer,
the only time i felt safe in song. Ms. Baskerville led us
in the resistance, her purple lipstick and ever-expanding
mouth carrying us along. the same vocal cords that
sang with Louis. the same skin that challenged the
metropolitan opera. that glinted as she sang summertime. only
certain cities bless us with music. only certain streets allow
for the song to reverberate just right. that car speeding by,
windows down, music filling the intersection. rap tangling
us all together on the crosswalk. a few words escape
into the night air, picture divine vines growing on side abandoned
buildings. detroit is like this, overgrown, mid-erasure, but
beautiful most of all. it’s the closest lamppost before
brooklyn, the closest place to feel fluorescents
illuminating night, rhythm bumping concrete.