“If I was a bird, daddy-o, I would sometimes fly so high I would not see this world at all. I would soar! Just soar way up into the blue where heaven is, and the smell of earth does not go, neither the noise of juke boxes nor radios, television or record shops. Up there, I would not hear anything but winds blowing. I would not see anything but space. I would not remember no little old taw-marble called the world rolling around somewhere with you on it and Joyce and my boss and my landlady and her hound-dog of a Trixie. There would not be no paydays up there, neither rent-days nor birthdays nor Sunday. There would not be nothing but blue sky—and wind—and space. So much space!

“But when I got real lonesome looking at space, I would head back towards earth. I would pierce old space with my beak and cleave the wind with my wings. Yes, I would! I would split the sky wide open to get back to earth. And when I come in sight of Lenox Avenue, man, I would caw once real loud. Everybody would look up and think it was a horn honking on the Chariot of God. But it wouldn’t be nobody but me—coming back to Harlem.

“I would swoop down on Seventh Avenue at six P.M. in the evening like a bat out of hell, do two loop-the-loops over the Theresa, and land on 125th Street by the Chock-Full-O’-Nuts. Then I would change myself back into a human, take the bus to my corner, put my key in my old landlady’s vestibule, go up to my Third Floor Rear, wash my face, change my clothes, lay my hair down, and go see Joyce, and tell her I am tired of eating raw greens—to cook me up some ham and collards. I could not stand to be no bird anyhow if Joyce were not with me. Also, I would miss my friends. I would see how lonesome it were all day long up there in the heavenly blue and I would come back to this earth and home. Two beers, bartender!”

Midsummer Madness

Midsummer Madness

PAVEMENT hot as a frying pan on Jennie Lou’s griddle. Heat devils dancing in the air. Men in windows with no undershirts on—which is one thing ladies can’t get by with if they lean out windows. Sunset. Stoops running over with people, curbs running over with kids. August in Harlem too hot to be August in hell. Beer is going up a nickel a glass, I hear, but I do not care. I would still be forced to say gimme a cool one.