Deneb in the Swan; Altair in the Eagle; Vega in the Lyre—he brought home a woman

at three in the morning and told me to get out of bed and go sit on the front porch.

I listened to her having an orgasm—

a chord, a jazz chord: three thirds on top of the root.

It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not—it’s feeling.

Vega, in the Lyre of Orpheus, a double-double that looks like two stars but is four,

two and two. Diminished or augmented. The sheets were stained in the morning when I was

let back in the house. So I bought my own mattress and put it in another room. Lyric: one

strum over four strings vibrating simultaneously. One afternoon I took a walk

down the street to buy a half gallon of milk. When I came home I found him

with a new woman. Both were naked in my bed, on my mattress,

under my covers in my room that was separate from his. Of the first magnitude

or brighter or darker.