MAKING A JOYFUL NOISE

by Mary K O’Melveny

No Kings, October 17, 2026

 

We are at the Village Green.

Hand-made signs displayed like

concert batons. Cars honk like geese.

Like bicycle horns. Like coronets.

Turns out, each vehicle’s horn has

distinct sound. Tinny. Bulbous. Sharp.

A thin wail. A robust shout. A stout

man on an opera stage. A US

composer once conducted a horn

concerto with twenty Mini-

Coopers. It is easy to imagine

on this brisk October afternoon.

 

Drivers are music makers too.

They Toot  Toot  Toot  Toot. Ta Ta Ta.

Beep Beep  Beep Beep. Passengers wave, 

clap, shout out No Kings. This Is What 

Democracy Looks Like.  We wave 

back, save our voices for the next 

chant. The bus bound for Oneonta 

unfurls foghorn sounds as it passes.

One man bellows No Kings But Jesus!! 

Another yells Vote like your life 

depends on it. We hurl those words

back in agreement. Vote Early! Vote!!

 

A Mariachi band arrives in full

regalia, guitars at the ready.

Celito Lindo! Ay Ay Ay Ay!

Harmonies filter through chilled air.

Tourists take in the scene. Some nod,

Smile. Others look away, as if their

purchases have somehow made them

complicit in this moment. Someone

with a drum begins to snap snap

tap tap. We’re all a swing band now.

We’re playing for keeps. Praying to

be heard. Staying upbeat. Ay Ay Ay Ay!

Mary K O’Melveny, a happily retired attorney, is the author of five poetry collections and a chapbook. What Remains? is just out from Broadstone Books. Mary’s award-winning poems have appeared in many print and on-line literary journals and anthologies and on international blog sites, including The New Verse News. Mary’s collection Flight Patterns was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her book Merging Star Hypotheses (2020) was a semi-finalist for The Washington Prize, sponsored by The Word Works. Mary has been three-times nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an active member of the Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group and her poetry appears in the Group’s two published anthologies An Apple In Her Hand and Rethinking The Ground Rules. Mary lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.

HOMAGE TO WAYNE (AND MY FATHER)

by Dick Altman

In a 2014 interview, the saxophonist Wayne Shorter was asked how often his working quartet rehearsed. His reply was evasive and illuminating: “How do you rehearse the future?” This was classic Shorter—gnomic, gnostic, mischievous, wise. It was a bit of a humblebrag too. For more than six decades, he conjured the future of music into being, with or without the benefit of rehearsal. Shorter, who died yesterday at 89, was a giant of jazz as an improviser, bandleader, and thinker, but above all as a composer—arguably the greatest in jazz since Thelonious Monk, and inarguably one of the greatest the genre, and the United States, has ever produced. —David A. Graham, The Atlantic, March 3, 2023

                               “All or nothing at all

                                 Half a love, never appealed to me

                                 If your heart, it never could yield to me

                                Then I'd rather, rather have nothing at all…”

 

Wayne—I once thought Sinatra’s voice was the best one alive

to interpret the ballad that launched his career into the musical

stratosphere—until I heard yours—heard your sax—above

a hundred-and-fifty other memorable voices—wrap its breath

around my soul—your intimate—languid purr—as if stroking—

rather than playing—the notes—imbues “longing” with the blade

of desire unshared—I imagine us conversing at The Five Spot—

Greenwich Village’s storied jazz dive—your “All or Nothing at All”

doing all the talking—softly—soothingly—trying to mend

a twentyish broken heart—you keep it low and slow—no evidence

of Sinatra’s signature swing—you’re standing at the other side

of the table—answering the sadness you see in my eyes—my face—

so very you to sing as if I were the only person in the room—

 

                                 I said all, or nothing at all

                                 If it's love, there ain't no in between

                                 Why begin then cry, for something

                                 that might have been

                                 No I'd rather, rather have nothing at all

 

Your sax bewitchingly mouths the words—shares their ache—

this is your magic—to get beneath the skin of the music—to find

the pulse—to release its essence—I close my eyes—draw into me

the air filled with your genius—wonder if there will ever be another

like you—like her

 

Note: The poet’s father Arthur Altman composed the music to “All or Nothing at All.” Lyrics used in the poem by permission.

Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, riverSedge, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, THE Magazine, Humana obscura, The Offbeat, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The RavensPerch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 100 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.