Kalamazoo Poetry Collective: Motown
| Jon Posner
My mother raised me
on Motown
and though the first cassette
I ever picked for myself
was by the Beastie Boys
it was her box set of
Hitsville USA singles
that I kept reaching for
particularly disc 2
which in lieu of
its missing hitsville logo sports
a soft felt cover that simply reads
“soul”
the opening track is “My Girl”
with that bassline that
thumps and gulps
like my heart and my throat
when my eyes see
some thing of beauty so
intense that my brain almost overloads
and I’m left standing slackjawed and
stuttering, “h-hah-h-hi”
it catches me like that
but also in the pit of what little gut
I have, and I feel
like I’ve shrunk to half my size;
overpowered by the noise.
when that twangy guitar comes in
I am jolted forward like a marionette
in total submission to the strings
and they set me down on the cd cover
now a flowing field of fabric
that harmonizes as it rustles
first the Temptations
then
the Four Tops
Stevie’s harmonica
The Isley Brothers
An easterly breeze brings
the Supremes
that fades
into the buzz of motors
punctuated by the click
and clack of a love train
en route from Philly through Detroit
next stop Chicago
bottom out in Los Angeles
and back again
It forms a ring
with the Great Lakes as the stone
sapphire blue
liquid hope diamonds
These are majestic
like oceans that bucked
the trend and stayed
Fresh
See the midwest is salty enough
from clearing snow at
Thanksgiving and Christmas
and Memorial day maybe
our collective snow shovel
toiling and school days in
blizzards hardens us like ice
flows dotting shorelines like
sequins sparkles like it must be
written somewhere that we Great
Lakers are destined to be
fabulous
here our boots crackle
like the white
noise from the record
needle backing up the
hum from the Hitsville
do you feel it?
in your ankles
and your heels do you
feel the smoothness of the singles?
Sending sustenance everywhere like
the water hydrates the studio tapes
shining
these lakes are a dance floor
and disco-ball
and they emanate
they irrigate
bones flexing
and twisting
writhing and jiving
sliding
grapevining
like me and my mama
throwing down to Smokey after
school across the
kitchen my mother is my
match maker
my bride veiled Jackson 5 times in
lake mist in the morning
and Marvin Gaye will
be playing on our wedding night
These lakes my sunshine on cloudy days
I hold her names hard in my mouth
Michigan
Huron
Erie Ontario
Superior
you make my heart shake like
ba bum bum ba bum bum ba bum bum
A voice within me keeps repeating you, you, you
I’m not sure what this means exactly, but it seems like an accurate metaphor, especially on a Monday.
NY rose me, most high chose me
Mixtape Of The Week.
.
You know that Borges story about the guy who tried to rewrite Don Quixote word-for-word? He doesn’t finish the whole thing, of course, but the small parts that he does successfully reproduce (a few chapters and some extended verses) the author finds to be infinitely better and much more subtle than the original. That’s sort of how we feel when we say that the first song on the new Weeknd mixtape is better than anything by Michael Jackson.
“Simple Girl” by Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
I never feel more connected [to humanity] than I do when I’m lost in a great song. A great song, to me, is life-affirming. It makes me feel awake to being alive…[When I was younger,] I’m not sure I thought of songs as something that people sat down and wrote. They sounded like pieces of gold that people went into a cave and came out with.
Angus and Julia Stone - Big Jet Plane (Michael Brun Bootleg)
As Michael said, he likes the original, he just wanted to put his touch on it, the result, one of the best re edits of this year. “Big Jet Plane” was released in 2010 by Angus and Julia Stone, a brother-sister duo from Australia.
Remember when I said I only wanted to listen to “Oy Oy Oy” for the rest of my life? I changed my mind.
“Una Vaina Loca” by Fuego for all of the ladies’ nights.
“Dear Rock ‘N’ Roll,” a poem from Newspaper Blackout by Austin Kleon
