Kind of Blue

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by Nicole Karch

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I snaked out of time and restless places;
I rolled and foamed;
I smoldered next to their cigarettes.

Too voluptuous for Bop,
too capricious for chords.

They caught the hint,
heard my possibilities
undulate like waves
and began to weave me
into being.

Through scrapped compositions,
false starts, and frustrations,
I taught them my name:

    Call me Rule-Wrecker.
      Call me Abandonment.
    Call me Modal.

I warned them too:
I’m a slippery cat, man–
exuberant as improvisation,
wild as storm-lapis waters of invention.

But when it became too much
and they’d almost had enough
I whispered again:

Call me Kind of Blue.

Call me a freedom so infinite,
your music will catch the flames of stars
and scorch this American hate

down to its deepest shadows.

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Nicole Karch is a poet and educator based in Zanesville, Ohio. She received a BA in English from Cornell University and will soon earn an MEd from Muskingum University. She is currently writing a collection of poems that explores Appalachian Ohio identity and her ancestral ties to the region.

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