Disciple

My father: younger, handsome, downright square, eyes like brown buttons fastening his face over his soul, mouth not too straight to swear, to say, man, sonny stitt's ass trashed the place, hymning his saxophonist small-g god, enlisted arms push-up strong, lips curled less and less around cigarettes (in an odd reversal of what the army did best: march men to foul habits) and more around his mouthpiece, in search of pure embouchure: not square: hell-bent on welling a full sound from his horn: a liquid literature with biblical phrasing, an interlude of stimulants unchemical to blood.