-as they once played those smoke-filled rooms-

the snare-drummer's

swishing brush strokes caress the sultry
front-girl, mouth to the mic who drops
a jazzy sigh with every phrase.

clinking cocktail glasses add to the atmosphere.

tumbling ice cubes accompany pizzicato bass,
muted alto sax,–– the piano, lightly keyed.

tonight, it's the “Hank Rossi Quartet”

featuring the “Vocal Artistry of Deborah Pinía"

a three-night stand at the “Seven Seas Club”

in Newport, Rhode Island, sometime in the low-
middle dates of the early 1950s.

the room's hot, misty and red-tinctured,–– like being inside

an inflated parade balloon.

smooth licks all night long;

not one forte.

last notes linger through an atmosphere
of hanging clouds of exhaled smoke

with never a raucous ovation, because
at the "Seven Seas", that would be perceived as rude.