45 Records
Older sister bought
our first records
when I was nine.
The most memorable--
Another Brick in the Wall,
Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,
Hot Stuff,
Le Freak,
Call Me,
all confounding
for a girl my age;
but I could live
because of them.
Nile Rodgers’ bass,
Michael Jackson’s groove,
Donna Summer’s aerial vocals,
and Blondie’s punky
riffs. It was my intro
to art’s articulation
of emotion, though I had
no language for it.
All I knew is those
songs and many others,
played until they
skipped like a heartbeat,
were my first intimation
of something living inside
of me, waiting to be
exhumed. Anima.
Spirit. And unlike
the religious songs
of my youth, these
awakened in me a kind
of transcendence that
would take decades
to understand.
Summer at Twelve
The shopkeeper kept silent each time
my friend and I snuck behind the far row
of books, eyes wide at The Joy of Sex.
Perhaps it was time we knew. At
twelve, we bled, could reproduce.
And we were children of the seventies;
innocence so passé. Oh, the wonders in pen
and ink! The endless bodily arrangements!
It was enough to turn adults red as poppies,
to transfix the steadiest mind. But after
the bookstore, we would eat ice cream--
bubblegum flavor, confettied with gumballs,
each fished from our mouths and saved
for later. Tiny, colorful pools of drool
collected like polka-dots on paper napkins where
each gumball sat, counted, to see
who'd scored the most that day. Then we raced
home on bikes, the road frying-pan hot.
Our Coppertone legs glistened like mirages,
flashed the unwitting invitations of angels,
goddess-bound.
Tricia Gates Brown's poetry has appeared in Portland Review, ANTAE Journal, and Yellow Arrow Journal, among other publications, and her first poetry collection Of A Certain Age is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in mid-2025. By trade, she is an editor and co-writer, mainly working for the National Park Service and Native tribes. Her debut novel Wren won a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal. For fun, she makes art!
Older sister bought
our first records
when I was nine.
The most memorable--
Another Brick in the Wall,
Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,
Hot Stuff,
Le Freak,
Call Me,
all confounding
for a girl my age;
but I could live
because of them.
Nile Rodgers’ bass,
Michael Jackson’s groove,
Donna Summer’s aerial vocals,
and Blondie’s punky
riffs. It was my intro
to art’s articulation
of emotion, though I had
no language for it.
All I knew is those
songs and many others,
played until they
skipped like a heartbeat,
were my first intimation
of something living inside
of me, waiting to be
exhumed. Anima.
Spirit. And unlike
the religious songs
of my youth, these
awakened in me a kind
of transcendence that
would take decades
to understand.
Summer at Twelve
The shopkeeper kept silent each time
my friend and I snuck behind the far row
of books, eyes wide at The Joy of Sex.
Perhaps it was time we knew. At
twelve, we bled, could reproduce.
And we were children of the seventies;
innocence so passé. Oh, the wonders in pen
and ink! The endless bodily arrangements!
It was enough to turn adults red as poppies,
to transfix the steadiest mind. But after
the bookstore, we would eat ice cream--
bubblegum flavor, confettied with gumballs,
each fished from our mouths and saved
for later. Tiny, colorful pools of drool
collected like polka-dots on paper napkins where
each gumball sat, counted, to see
who'd scored the most that day. Then we raced
home on bikes, the road frying-pan hot.
Our Coppertone legs glistened like mirages,
flashed the unwitting invitations of angels,
goddess-bound.
Tricia Gates Brown's poetry has appeared in Portland Review, ANTAE Journal, and Yellow Arrow Journal, among other publications, and her first poetry collection Of A Certain Age is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in mid-2025. By trade, she is an editor and co-writer, mainly working for the National Park Service and Native tribes. Her debut novel Wren won a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal. For fun, she makes art!
