Man with Trombone
        Isaiah Robinson, 22, arrested over a noise complaint for his street music.

Leave the man with the trombone
alone. Let him blow...

Rousted by the cops,
second degree breach of the peace.

Maybe the peace around here
needs some breach.

The brass slide testing the limit
of one's arm's length,

and maybe even the long arm
of the law. An instrument that looks

like some kind of failed invention,
but it's not a vuvuzela, for godsakes.

In the middle of winter, in the center
of the city, with buses going by,

in the swirl of the news cycle,
still twenty-months till the next election,

we may need some brass-assed sounds
to wake the people in this world.

Don't we all need some more
trombone in our lives?

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Copyright © 2022 James Finnegan All rights reserved
from Connecticut River Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission