From the monthly archives: February 2010
Poet Jericho Brown lays down the perfect mix tape to groove to, break up to, and dance lying down to.
Featuring tracks by Prince, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Tendy Pendergrass, and more
Rain for weeks, Biblical,
the streets slick
as licked gray sticks of gum.
Merciless sluice
over the windshield–
When does it dawn on you that you want to play the piano? When your mother keeps dragging you off to see her best friend, Dame Myra Hess? When the toy piano you got for your fourth birthday is the only thing you managed to save from the earthquake? Or is it when you pass a musical instruments store, suddenly begin trembling, go inside, sit down at the first bench, and, without knowing how, spin off what the astounded salesman identifies as Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue?
I shouldn’t be out here. I should be back at the house, packing my things, like I said. He’d hate this. Told me once that reading each other’s e-mail would be a bigger violation of trust than sleeping around. Also said he despised ultimatums, but I gave him one anyway. Either come home, fit yourself back into our real life or it’s time for me to leave.
calling for work on the theme of IMMIGRATION — including INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION — to be published in an anthology, entitled COMMON BOUNDARY.
It was like the last time he’d been there, only that time he’d fallen, smashed into the coffee table and broke the bong. He smelled like dirty bongwater for days until his dad asked him to take a shower and change clothes.
My skin is cellophane wrap; my heart is pinned smack in the middle. Squarish in shape, it catches the light. HELLO MY NAME MY IS MARION.
