Love in A Flat

--Lauren K. Alleyne

 

after Dean Young

Dean in a story about Coltrane:

how one time in a recording, he hit

a wrong note—a real clam.

In the second take, he hit it again,

this time harder, longer.

The third time, it became the heart—

the sound all the other notes wrap themselves around,

a different understanding of the melody—

the song beneath the song: the stubborn beat

holding up the heaviness of flesh.