LANGSTON HUGHES TRIBUTE ISSUE Thomas Sayers Ellis   CARELESS LOVE In St. Louis Blues, the sound of workers singing while lifting sacks of feed moves a young W.C. Handy beyond his father's wishes to a street corner jam session, to The Big Rooster, and Eartha Kitt's ain't got no friend nowhere lord, ain't got no friend nowhere lord, all by myself, no one to love. Soon he's humming—"Careless Love"— next to Pearl Bailey who, playing his aunt, wants to know, "What kind of love is that?" At the piano, his fingers dart like promiscuous blackbirds from key-to-key, winged sinners. In his father's house there's no room for earthly love —one of the reasons Paramount didn't bother to cast spouses for father or aunt. When Mahalia Jackson spots him at The Big Rooster, he's forced to choose between music & home. He moves into a room on Beale Street where he thinks of Ruby Dee, his childhood sweetheart. Royalties from the sheet music of "Harlem Blues." Nine dollars & forty cents. "Do you think this money is evil?" His voice is satin, his conk reflects the morning star, the star of love in eyes, brown, alive. Love, O love, careless love.   Thomas Sayers Ellis was born and raised in Washington, DC. He is the author of Skin, Inc., The Maverick Room and The Genuine Negro Hero. Ellis is a Cave Canem faculty member and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Lesley University Low Residency MFA Program. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Grand Street, the Nation and the Best American Poetry (1997, 2001 and 2010). He is the winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares, a Whiting Writers Award, and fellowships to the Fine Arts Work Center, MacDowell, Bread Loaf, and Yaddo. His photographs were featured in the Poetry Foundation's DC Poetry Tour and Beltway Poetry Quarterly's It's Your Mug Anniversary Issue.   Published in Volume 12, Number 1, Winter 2011.   To read more by this author: Thomas Sayers Ellis: DC Places Issue Thomas Sayers Ellis: Audio Issue Thomas Sayers Ellis: It's Your Mug Anniversary Issue