REVIEW AMERICANA

 

Spring 2018

Volume 13, Issue 1

https://americanpopularculture.com/review_americana/spring_2018/tayyar.htm




KAREEM TAYYAR

 

 

Listening to Lou Reed
on the Subway, 2:45am

 

Legs stretched out onto the empty seats across from me
Moon and starlight beyond the windows like so much black-and-white graffiti
You tell me all about Candy Darling
Sister Ray
The New York Whale
Severin and his leather Goddess
Sally and her St. Marks blues

I hear you, Lou
Rhythm strumming for your Coney Island Baby
And for all those ghosts that Andy Warhol used to know
The fare I’ve paid should take me all the way to Spanish Harlem
            Come the silhouette of morning
And in the meantime I want to know the secrets the city tells
            When she’s talking in her restless sleep

 

 

 

Talking Waylon Jennings Blues

 

This morning you dreamed of blackbirds in clouds.
Of the blue feather of love,
Falling slowly from the rooftops of autumn and into your yard.
Of an old country song that you used to play on the guitar,
But whose chorus is all that you still remember.

By the time you pulled yourself from sleep,
There were no clouds left in the sky,
And the feather must have drifted onto a neighbor’s property.

But that guitar was where you had left it,
And it was still in tune as you began to pluck its strings,
The verses coming back to you like a prayer you had forgotten you knew.

 

 


 

Back to Top
Review Home

 

© 2018 Americana: The Institute for the Study of American Popular Culture
AmericanPopularCulture.com