Nine Bar Blues. Sheree Renée Thomas

was frivolous to be seen in a tiny market with overhead mirrors to discourage the thieves and poor people jostling against wealthier ones, all grasping at the last remnants of normalcy and good health. Marva felt everyone should be in mourning. She had taken to wearing her pearls and best black dress, just in case.

      “The mirrors should be covered,” she had said to the artist and the professor at that first gathering. “Mirrors are portals to the spirit world. There are enough haints here now, don’t you think? Shouldn’t there be wailing somewhere? Nelse, put on one of those whining, crying, hiccupping records you call ‘classics,’ why don’t you.” Nelse could hear the exaggerated sniff from the kitchen.

      “If you covered the mirrors, we won’t have nothing,” the Graying Afro had said, anxiously glancing at a reflection of himself. As the darkness hung over the city, unmoved, he had slowly begun to lose the iron grip he held over his tongue. He was a parody of a parody, a kind of Cornel West bow-tied 300