Placeholder Music
Facts stopped being important in the droughty spring
Cobain and Nixon then Gacy became discarnate, my
bedroom windows juddered from 90210’s opening
amplified through a Peavey half-stack, the town traded
an 80-year- old restaurant for a Target, and each day
began old to young with four children’s alarm clocks.
If asked, I was not a noise terrorist, nor did I block the
phone lines for eight hours a day after AOL arrived
in the mail. I was thirteen and anti-religion as religion.
I did not cry when Michael Keaton rode the roller
coaster in My Life or date my best friend’s ex or
charge mail-order CD services to my parents’ Visa.
My belt test was not halted when I could not break
the board. My contrivance of choice was not to
change the subject. I did well in chemistry. Or so.
But how can I call upon the details of OJ and Tupac,
Zack and Kelly, JonBenét or The Bends or Kaczynski or
The Never Ending Story now? The facts are old and watery.
At 36, my wife is my supplemental mind. Yet when
I hear the guitar theme of Beverly Hills, there’s my
brother at the door, telling me to repeat what I just said.
Cobain and Nixon then Gacy became discarnate, my
bedroom windows juddered from 90210’s opening
amplified through a Peavey half-stack, the town traded
an 80-year- old restaurant for a Target, and each day
began old to young with four children’s alarm clocks.
If asked, I was not a noise terrorist, nor did I block the
phone lines for eight hours a day after AOL arrived
in the mail. I was thirteen and anti-religion as religion.
I did not cry when Michael Keaton rode the roller
coaster in My Life or date my best friend’s ex or
charge mail-order CD services to my parents’ Visa.
My belt test was not halted when I could not break
the board. My contrivance of choice was not to
change the subject. I did well in chemistry. Or so.
But how can I call upon the details of OJ and Tupac,
Zack and Kelly, JonBenét or The Bends or Kaczynski or
The Never Ending Story now? The facts are old and watery.
At 36, my wife is my supplemental mind. Yet when
I hear the guitar theme of Beverly Hills, there’s my
brother at the door, telling me to repeat what I just said.
|
David Miller RodriguezDavid Rodriguez is a writer and teacher based in New Orleans with an MFA from Florida State University. He has previously been published in the New Orleans Review, The Southeast Review, The Sandy River Review, Hawai'i Review, and Viewfinder, among other places.
|