for Ryan Jarman What Wordsworth did not know (and it’s not his fault) is who cares about the music of the howling wind, that sublime and desperate tenor mixing with the soprano of broken branches and birdsong in the brazen breeze? Tonight, I’m already annoyed. I’ve had two glasses of rosé, and I’m in the shower avoiding the water on my hair and singing along with Ryan and his sharp and twanging electric guitar—the voice of my blood if it could sing along this plea of the teenage suburbanite that sleeps inside us all: Gonna have to try finding my place in life/But I’ll be alright if I’m just/In the neon night looking for another sign/Drinking Italian wine. I wish that Wordsworth could see this steamy sing-along and my stomps in the slippery tub, but he was born too soon, and here I am now, joy bubbling through my veins instead of rage; oh, how did I ever manage to be born on this earth, so forsaking the precious gales of poetry in favor of a simple song, written by Ryan holed up in Ridgewood breathing all at the same time the same silent air, the exhaust floating up from the cars speeding past the graveyard on the Jackie Robinson Parkway?
Brittany Ober is an English teacher and mom by day and a philosophy student and poet by night. Her poetry has been published in Gutter Eloquence, Ample Remains, The Aurora Journal, and Words & Whispers.
Main Squeeze Literary Journal 