Valentine for Etta James
by Robert Cording
You stop my heart the way you go for broke,
Etta, your low-in-the-gut voice making love
to Baby, BA-by, that one sugar and grit word
like a slow drip of morphine, your husky contralto
almost coughing out I’d ho, ho, ho, ho rather be
a blind girl, Baby, than watch you walk away
from me. You know he will, know all too well
how love just ups and leaves and, yes, know
you’ll go on sleeping with the humiliation
of your need. Still, the way you sing love’s
crazy wonder stops my heart. You won’t give up
on it, won’t lie about it, won’t have anything
but love’s sweet and sad chords splitting
you down the middle; won’t see anything but
this one choice: to shut your eyes and be a blind girl.
Recently retired, Robert Cording taught English and creative writing at the College of the Holy Cross, where he was the Barrett Professor of Creative Writing. He has published six collections of poems, most recently Walking With Ruskin(CavanKerry, 2010). He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, as well as several poetry grants from the Connecticut Commission for the Arts. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Nation, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, Poetry, the Kenyon, the New England Review, Orion, and The New Yorker.
rcording@holycross.edu
You stop my heart the way you go for broke,
Etta, your low-in-the-gut voice making love
to Baby, BA-by, that one sugar and grit word
like a slow drip of morphine, your husky contralto
almost coughing out I’d ho, ho, ho, ho rather be
a blind girl, Baby, than watch you walk away
from me. You know he will, know all too well
how love just ups and leaves and, yes, know
you’ll go on sleeping with the humiliation
of your need. Still, the way you sing love’s
crazy wonder stops my heart. You won’t give up
on it, won’t lie about it, won’t have anything
but love’s sweet and sad chords splitting
you down the middle; won’t see anything but
this one choice: to shut your eyes and be a blind girl.
Recently retired, Robert Cording taught English and creative writing at the College of the Holy Cross, where he was the Barrett Professor of Creative Writing. He has published six collections of poems, most recently Walking With Ruskin(CavanKerry, 2010). He has received two NEA fellowships in poetry, as well as several poetry grants from the Connecticut Commission for the Arts. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Nation, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, Poetry, the Kenyon, the New England Review, Orion, and The New Yorker.
rcording@holycross.edu
