Cigar Box Banjo by Kim Addonizio

God plucked a rib and found a woman.

Cigar Box Banjo

by Kim Addonizio¹

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Blind Willie Johnson could coax
music from a single string.  God plucked a rib
and found a woman.  Concert aria
in the gypsy song, long groan
of orgasm in the first kiss, plastic bag
of heroin ripening in the poppy fields. 
Right now, in a deep pocket of a politician’s brain,
a bad idea is traveling along an axon
to make sure the future resembles a cobra
rather than an ocarina.
Still there’s hope in every cartoon bib
above which a tiny unfinished skull in
its beneficence dispenses a drooling grin.
The heart may be a trashy organ,
but when it plucks its shiny banjo
I see blue wings in the rain.

1. First published in My Black Angel: Blues Poems and Portraits (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2014).