Two Poems: “Songwriting” & “Listening to Kendrick Lamar”

By James Miller

Songwriting

In 1991 you stopped here
to fill your tank. Bombs
were falling,
always.

You watched
the numbers roll,
and paid—
in cash.

That weekend you drove
into the city to dig for
worthy records. Scored
a near-mint Live
at the Witch
Trials.

In imitation
of love, you wrote
a song, knowing no more
than a dozen people
would hear it.

You were sure
another would come,
sure as drones whirring
on the Afghan
steppe.

Listening to Kendrick Lamar

Seventh day in hospital,
her blood-iron won’t wake.

No release till we’ve coasted
24 hours without fever.

I bow out for Luby’s lunch,
thread slow through Target

multi-media, scoop up Kendrick’s
near-latest. Spit and spindle two

tracks, roll slant as antibody harmonics,
twice round the parking lot.

His first drop drizzles on droughted
backyard Augustine. Synth strings

ship in from tech-noir Detroit,
scrape traitor cells from humid walls.

Beats pump out stale storm water, slough
shingles off the roof. Back to track one—

flick of finger and again, again.
Drone right into the turn lane.

Lift stained needle from one last
furred groove. Hair heavy over

her left ear, thick with sweat.

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James Miller won the Connecticut Poetry Award in 2020. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Typehouse, Rabid Oak, North Dakota Quarterly, Scoundrel Time, 8 Poems, Phoebe, Yemassee, Mantis, Concho River Review, Blue River Review, Cleaver, SOFTBLOW and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @AndrewM1621.