for James Brown
—good God!
when you say hit it // I hit it // & when you say strike it I smash
my note streaming gold of the body just slashing horn
sound now <BREAK> // little window for guitar //
<BREAK > work it work it // giving the drummer some //
pompadour—fried—dyed—& laid to the side //
voice just vocal fry with sub-glottal pressure // body
frenetic // body (too late to stop now) a dynamo //
—O hitman of funk // born dead but still born // —O
Shōgun of funk // down here in the hardscrabble dirty
guttural moment // Maceo horn run // spine is yours // hips //
coiling blood // dance moves pouring out of me like jabber //
all slang // no image // just scream & wail // my weeping
stuttering (cold sweat) sweating presence in your presence
in secure possession—now I am listening—of my own
transfiguring—excuse me while I do the boogaloo—redemption
Dennis Hinrichsen is the author of eleven books and chapbooks. His most recent is This Is Where I Live I Have Nowhere Else To Go, winner of the 2020 Grid Poetry Prize, and [q / lear], a chapbook from Green Linden Press. He has new poems in The American Journal of Poetry, American Poetry Journal and The Maine Review, and forthcoming in Canary, I-70 Review, Tinderbox Poetry Review and Under a Warm Green Linden. From May 20217-April 2019, he served as the first Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing [MI] area.