I sit with my dog
listening to Josephine Baker’s
voice dancing out from my speakers,
trying to read a book about
cosmic background radiation,
and the origin of spacetime,
thinking someday I might just get
string theory and black holes,
but now wanting to peel a banana
to see how the skin falls as it did
on that skirt she wore in Paris
in the 1920s,
drop a scoop of ice cream on it,
coat it with chocolate syrup,
plop a cherry on top,
red and round and ripe as her voice.
Instead, I slip the dog a treat,
pour myself a shot of bourbon,
make believe I’m sipping Count Basie,
Miles, or Coltrane,
or some sadly wailing clarinet
somewhere on the left bank
of this expanding universe,
trying not to cry over spilled time
while the dog turns his radioscopic ears
toward Josephine
singing from multiverses far away.