CHET BAKER’S EMBOUCHURE
No longer able to hit notes
without a set of natural teeth—
but he kept at it,
didn’t let it silence
the golden sound within him,
and, in spite of his demons,
he learned how to play again.
Music elevated him
above a self-imposed gutter,
who left wrinkled valleys
across his dented face.
We can hear him alive
and not dead on
an Amsterdam sidewalk
in search of a sound that
left him a ragged immortal,
when his sunken mouth
drew one last hungry breath.
Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019) and Invasion of the Shadow People (Luchador Press, 2022), in addition to over a dozen chapbooks and split books. His work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Gargoyle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Heavy Feather Review, San Pedro River Review and Trailer Park Quarterly, among others. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, he lives and writes in Long Beach, CA
