Famed musician Jelly Roll Morton got his start playing the piano in the ballroom of a brothel in Storyville, New Orleans’ Red Light District.

Eight women practice the music
of their bodies: white dresses

raised to show ankles, a suggestion

of pale calves, stockings. Behind them,
the mirrored wall repeats their gardenia-

blossomed hair, the way they lean
their hips into the piano player,

touch him with their floral-sweat

scent. He is young, background,
an ear, a coat, a few fingers floating

above the keys. The mirror too high

to hold anything but an idea of dark
hair, eyebrows, forehead. Each sound

he names, the sharps and flats, each
a woman dancing, a woman

turning toward the camera, her voice

a scale repeating itself into the flash-
bright walls, the gesture of his fingers

lifted before the first sound comes out.