Sat. Nov 2nd, 2024

Wow. Another irreplaceable icon has departed a planet that could scarcely contain her. Tina Turner: what a goddess, an inspiration, a river deep & mountain high human being and a truly beautiful woman in every conceivable sense of the word. Lots more to say, and I’ve already said some things (see below for my poetic tribute that tried to do her justice, and also supplied the title of my first collection — offered up then and now with maximum love, humility, and the whitest possible self-deprecation.)

Tina Turner’s Legs

Those thighs could crack your back

like a peanut beneath a pair of pumps.

Or slice your head off like freshly-shaved

scissors, and you’d lick them like lollipops,

in awe and almost insane, a dream cum true.

No, video is good as it’ll ever get—and

that’s good enough: you wouldn’t even

begin to know how to handle those miles

of succulent straight lines, lost in darkness,

delirious; look but don’t touch or better

yet, just listen. There’s a lot you could learn:

the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone,

the hip bone’s connected to the back bone…

Look at them. Walk a mile in those heels:

Muscle and rhythm and the brutal love

of harmony. You have to be strong to bear

that body of work. You carry that weight

long enough and the burden becomes a kind

of blessing, at least in the eye (and especially

the shy, shaking hands) of the beholder.

Take a deep dive into this river and come

out on the other side of the mountain, high.

We always try to kill what we can’t control;

that’s a whole history of colored commentary.

Black and blue, the blackened blues of beautiful blackness.

Listening and looking, thirsty like a lush

in a liquor store, but this kind of sweetness

could kill you—and you’ll die tasting brown

sugar on your tongue, panting like Pavlov’s

bitch, kissing those boots, holding out hope

that one day soon they’ll walk all over you.

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