Forty-Five RPM
Side A:
There’s no groove to get back into
when the digital music skips,
no needle head to weigh with a penny
either Lincoln or wheat facing down
to prevent the vinyl warps
from bucking and tossing the arm
like a tinhorn airborne,
not truly a skip, more a flight
into the surreal silence of space
and the unexpected jarring of gravity.
Music’s a wave, an aural weft,
and the scrim of ones and zeroes
of converted bits
but a cloak over the actual sine.
Side B:
Believe me, if I could move
like James Brown I would,
but the only parts I can master
are the splits at the finale
and an entourage of two
picking me up from the floor.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County and works in mental health. He has poems in Rabid Oak, Williwaw Journal, Eclectica, and won the Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize.
Side A:
There’s no groove to get back into
when the digital music skips,
no needle head to weigh with a penny
either Lincoln or wheat facing down
to prevent the vinyl warps
from bucking and tossing the arm
like a tinhorn airborne,
not truly a skip, more a flight
into the surreal silence of space
and the unexpected jarring of gravity.
Music’s a wave, an aural weft,
and the scrim of ones and zeroes
of converted bits
but a cloak over the actual sine.
Side B:
Believe me, if I could move
like James Brown I would,
but the only parts I can master
are the splits at the finale
and an entourage of two
picking me up from the floor.
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County and works in mental health. He has poems in Rabid Oak, Williwaw Journal, Eclectica, and won the Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize.
