full moon night 

forgotten in her cupboard 
champagne bowls 

ping of crystal—
she strokes each shining rim 
and listens to it sing 

Nicki clatters down the polished corridor at the Library of Congress downtown. In the basement, bittersweet memories, filled with nostalgia, wait to be re-explored.

jazz clubs filled 
with stardust melodies 
his crimson coupe 

shhh! 

a midnight kiss 
on the doorstep of her house  

The tardis lift descends. Years slip away as she joins the time of bright young things who ride the Twenties roar. The room is filled with visitors, faces shining with wonder. Oh! Nicki utters softly. To party with the Gatsbyean elite! To be Daisy’s cousin...

smoke-filled parlor 
drawled conversations 
and ennui 

Daisy’s simper 
in her flimsy frock 

Tom’s money strut  

Her childhood wakes as streams of music soar from George’s ancient grand as if to greet this stranger from the future. They almost say: Come, dance with me. Speechless with delight, Nicki inspects a score by Gershwin, complete with Ira’s wistful lyrics. A recording of George’s music echoes through the museum. What are these unfilled longings that pursue her? Are they ghosts from Rhapsody in Blue?

on a high 

the sultry soar 
of a saxophone 
swells the air 

Zelda’s photograph 
in smart cloche hat—

golden age—
time to revisit 
Midnight in Paris 

she sifts through Movies 
in her machine 

so tender, the night 

Author’s Notes:

1. Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981) composed and recorded “Stardust” in 1927.

2. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) married Zelda Sayre (1900-1948) in 1920. He wrote The Great Gatsby in 1925.

3. The American composer George Gershwin (1898-1937) wrote Rhapsody in Blue in 1924 and An American in Paris in 1928. His brother Ira Gershwin (1896-1983) wrote the lyrics of many of Gershwin’s songs.

4. Released in 2011, Midnight in Paris was written and directed by Woody Allen. Gil Pender, the main protagonist, is an “American in Paris,” a budding American writer who visits Paris with his fiancée. Gil travels back in time at midnight. His first trip is to the 1920s.

—Long-Listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #2

Hazel Hall

is a widely published Australian poet, musicologist, and international judge of Japanese short forms. She holds a PhD from Monash University, and she founded and coordinated the ekphrastic poetry group School of Music Poets from 2012 to 2017. From 2018 to 2022, she directed the Poetry at Manning Clark House series of readings. Her writing ranges from short Japanese styles to free verse and prose poetry. She is now completing Quiet Passage, a journal of poetry related to her travels to India.

Hazel’s most recent published collections include a chapbook of sonnets and hybrids, A Hint of Rosemary (Interactive Publications, 2024); two chapbooks in the Picaro Poets series published by Ginninderra Press: Breathe In, Breathe Out (2023) and Severed Web (2020); a radio play in 15 linked sonnets, Please Add Your Signature and Date it Here: A Verse Drama (Litoria Press, 2021); a full-length collection of tanka by Hazel Hall in collaboration with six other poets, Moonlight over the Siding (Interactive Press, 2018); and a chapbook with haiku by Hazel Hall and tai chi by Angelina Egan, Step By Step (Ginninderra Press, Picaro Poets series, 2018).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Miner’s Wife, sonka (sonnet + tanka) by Hazel Hall in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 21, January 2024)

⚡ A Question of Faith, tanka prose poem by Hazel Hall which also includes a pair of senryu and a cherita variation; MacQ publisher Clare MacQueen dubbed the piece “a heavenly hybrid” and selected it as one of eight Finalists in “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 15, September 2022)

⚡ See Index of Contributors for half-a-dozen additional hybrid poems by Hazel Hall in MacQ.