I will kill a song if I have to. If the vibrations feel more like medicine
than any crystal on my alter, I’m not afraid to play it over and over until it’s dead.
The first 24 seconds of Good Vibrations are just me and Carl Wilson
spread across a rotating heart-shaped bed, the bass melody feeding us
dark staining fruit, our hands embarrassingly red.
The first 24 seconds are waking up in the jungle, following a bird call
to a beehive full of honey. I no longer feel like a shrinking violet, a strangled
bassoon. But one second longer at the chorus, the part of the song
that keeps coming back, 25 seconds in and I’m rioting to the Rites of Spring.
They say excitation can mean “A disturbed or altered condition.”
I don’t know where but he takes me there, when the piccolos
come in and the atoms in my lashes collide one million times
as my lids grow heavy and love-sick.
My eyes are blue asterisks, star-shaped inflorescence, your voice
a church organ converting my deliquescence. Now the bed is a garden,
the headboard covered in zucchini blossoms and fat orange trumpets.
We feed each other baskets of wild edible flowers, while the clematis
and wisteria’s thick stems twist themselves around some fruit
that hasn’t been invented yet, one that reminds everyone
of all the soft parts of the body, hushed and smooth on the tongue.
I close my eyes and the scent of jasmine quickly overtakes everything,
his voice a kudzu vine. He holds my head in his lap like a small purple
cabbage, a deranged hydrangea dumb with weight, like top-heavy
heads of cauliflower bobbing in a fish tank.
The first second of the song, the sighhh of an Iiiiii, triplet quaver,
no need for introduction. But every time it hits 25,
I press the back arrow, rewind on my tape deck.
than any crystal on my alter, I’m not afraid to play it over and over until it’s dead.
The first 24 seconds of Good Vibrations are just me and Carl Wilson
spread across a rotating heart-shaped bed, the bass melody feeding us
dark staining fruit, our hands embarrassingly red.
The first 24 seconds are waking up in the jungle, following a bird call
to a beehive full of honey. I no longer feel like a shrinking violet, a strangled
bassoon. But one second longer at the chorus, the part of the song
that keeps coming back, 25 seconds in and I’m rioting to the Rites of Spring.
They say excitation can mean “A disturbed or altered condition.”
I don’t know where but he takes me there, when the piccolos
come in and the atoms in my lashes collide one million times
as my lids grow heavy and love-sick.
My eyes are blue asterisks, star-shaped inflorescence, your voice
a church organ converting my deliquescence. Now the bed is a garden,
the headboard covered in zucchini blossoms and fat orange trumpets.
We feed each other baskets of wild edible flowers, while the clematis
and wisteria’s thick stems twist themselves around some fruit
that hasn’t been invented yet, one that reminds everyone
of all the soft parts of the body, hushed and smooth on the tongue.
I close my eyes and the scent of jasmine quickly overtakes everything,
his voice a kudzu vine. He holds my head in his lap like a small purple
cabbage, a deranged hydrangea dumb with weight, like top-heavy
heads of cauliflower bobbing in a fish tank.
The first second of the song, the sighhh of an Iiiiii, triplet quaver,
no need for introduction. But every time it hits 25,
I press the back arrow, rewind on my tape deck.
Jazz De Nero is a poet and artist living in Buffalo, NY. Her work can be found in Queen Mob's Tea House, Cosmonauts Avenue, Ghost City Review, Peach Mag and BlazeVOX. Instagram: itslikeametaphor; Twitter: itslikeameteor.