Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey

 

Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
weren’t we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind me
my horn just growled and I
thought my heart would burst.
And Brad pressing with the
soft stick and Joe-Anne
singing low. Here we are now
in the White Tower, leaning
on one another, too tired
to go home. But don’t say a word,
don’t tell a soul, they wouldn’t
understand, they couldn’t, never
in a million years, how fine,
how magnificent we were
in that old club tonight.

from Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey: Poems 1991-1995 (Copper Canyon Press, 1996), © Hayden Carruth 1996, used by permission of the author and the publisher. Recording from Hayden Carruth: A Listener’s Guide (Copper Canyon Press, 1999), used with their permission.

Hayden Carruth was born in 1921, in Waterbury, Connecticut, and educated at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and ...

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