It's just poetry, it won't bite

Threads


04.18.20 Posted in today's words by

Joseph Mills lives and writes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 

To hear the author read his poem, click here:

Threads
By Joseph Mills

My students wear t-shirts with faces
of musicians who died years before
they were born, and they sit slumped
in postures of disdain and ennui.
I recognize how hard they’re trying
to act mature, and I remember riding
in Robbie’s black Oldsmobile Cutlass
with him and Danny, the three of us
our high school’s social committee
responsible for getting a band to play
the Christmas dance in the gymnasium.

We had no idea how to do such a thing
which is why we found ourselves lost
along backroads, looking for someone
someone had told someone was great.
We stopped at a farmhouse for directions
which sounds like a joke, but wasn’t.
Eventually we found the singer,
a guy five or ten years older than us,
and when he assured us that his band
kicked ass, we hired them immediately.

They played Pink Floyd all night,
as we shuffled around in our dresses
and three-piece suits, lost in ways
we didn’t even realize then, trying
to be adults but unsure how to do it,
thinking it meant wearing certain clothes,
holding one another at arm’s length,
and swaying to “Comfortably Numb.”



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